The US Senate would on Wednesday this week vote on a national abortion rights law — a process likely doomed to fail — after a leaked draft decision signalled the Supreme Court’s readiness to overturn Roe v Wade.
The Majority Leader of the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, who has called the draft ruling an ‘abomination,’ disclosed that he has teed up the vote on codifying the right to abortion in America, which the conservative-majority court appears poised to ban.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the prospects of success are virtually zero, given the blocking power of Republicans in an evenly divided 100-seat Senate where key legislation almost always faces a 60-vote threshold. However, the vote will nonetheless put lawmakers on record regarding one of the country’s most divisive issues.
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‘Republicans have tried to duck it,’ Schumer said Sunday at a press conference in Manhattan.
‘Now they have to show which side they’re on’ he added.
Africa Today News, New York reports that already, republican-controlled States have taken steps to restrict abortion rights in recent months, given that an overturning of 1973’s Roe v Wade ruling would give states the ability to make their own rules on abortion.
Top congressional Democrat Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, reiterated her outrage about the court’s upcoming likely decision, telling CBS News on Sunday that “the court has slapped women in the face in terms of disrespect for their judgments about the size and timing of their families.”
With Democrats lacking the necessary majority to push through codification, the only other option would appear to be changing Senate rules to lower the number of votes required to pass such a bill.
But Republicans — and a few senators in President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party — oppose such a move.
According to a poll released Friday by the Pew Research Center, about 61 percent of Americans believe abortion should remain legal in all or most circumstances.
But, as with so many other social issues, the gap between Democrats and Republicans is wide, and growing wider. Eight in 10 Democrats support abortion rights in all or most cases, more than double the 38 percent of Republicans who do, Pew said.