The House will vote in late September to protect abortion rights, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of D-California said this week after the Supreme Court rejected a motion to block Texas’ new law which banned most abortions in the state after six weeks.
The court’s late-night ruling left Democrats in Washington and across the country struggling to respond, sparking votes for action on Capitol Hill and renewing calls from activists for Supreme Court expansion that currently control the conservatives.
“It’s so awesome,” Pelosi said Thursday at an event in Texas, pledging to vote in the House when the House returns at the end of the month to “make sure women everywhere have access to reproductive health that they need “.
Democrats have joined the Women’s Health Protection Act, which “will enshrine Roe’s anti-Wade protection laws,” Rep. Judy Chu, D-California, the lead author of the report, told ABC News. bill.
“If it happened, access to abortion would be protected everywhere, in all states,” Chu said, adding that the House is expected to vote on the measure the week of Sept. 20.
But the path to follow is unclear in the Senate, where Democrats have a majority with only 50 seats. Forty-eight Democrats support the bill; Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Joe Manchin of West Virginia are not sponsors.
Even with the support of Mrs. Susan Collins, of Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, of Alaska, the pro-election, lack of votes to clear the 60-vote threshold of the House to get to the president’s office.
Although a Democratic aide to the Senate said “all options are on the table” in response to the Supreme Court decision, Chu was skeptical that the party could use the budget reconciliation process, which Democrats use to pass. the political agenda of President Joe Biden with just 50 votes. in the Senate around the Republican Party opposition, to enact protections against abortion.
“Anything we go through with conciliation has to have a direct impact on the budget and I have to think that would not be appropriate,” he said.
Even if Democrats passed a bill to enshrine protections for the 1973 Supreme Court decision, it would not be a “silver bullet,” said Kate Shaw, a professor of constitutional law at Cardozo Law School. legal contributor to ABC News.
“As a constitutional issue, I think Congress has a solid foundation, but I also think it’s possible that this conservative Supreme Court, especially if it was hostile to the effort to enshrine protections against abortion in federal law, could lean- to read [authority] closely, which could cause that law to be invalidated, ”Shaw said.
With the Conservative 6-3 majority in court and its plans to start a major fall abortion case filed by the state of Mississippi, some Democrats are pushing party leaders to consider altering the number. of judges in the highest court for the first time since 1869 – or change Senate rules to empower Democrats to pass abortion legislation with just 50 votes.
“We need to restore balance in court after Donald Trump and Sen. Mitch McConnell blatantly stole the seats of Justice Scalise and Justice Ginsburg,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., Said in a statement, referring to the refusal of Senate Republicans to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Judge Antonin Scalia until after the 2016 presidential election and decision to confirm a replacement for the late Liberal Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the fall of 2020, before the elections.
Representative Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., A member of the progressive “staff” and sponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, has been one of the people who called for the court to be expanded.
“We need to abolish the filibuster and we need to expand the court,” Pressley told ABC News Friday night. “I am not at all surprised by the extreme response of this court. The courts have not been on our side, and that is why Congress must act.”
But Biden, a former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been suspicious of changing Senate rules or altering the composition of the Supreme Court and instead set up a commission to study the issue.
“You are awaiting the conclusion of [the commission’s] report, look forward to reviewing it, seeing where they come from, “White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said on Thursday.
Democratic candidates and operatives also expect the Supreme Court’s actions to have an impact on upcoming election cycles, making abortion likely an important issue for the party seeking to defend government seats in 2021 and a majority in the House and Senate in 2022. .
Trish Turner of ABC News contributed to this report.