With the Supreme Court poised to gut Roe v. Wade, the Senate held a vote Monday on the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would codify abortion rights into law on a federal level, offering protections both to people seeking abortions and those performing them.
By all accounts, Democrats knew the bill would fail, but held the vote anyway as the national landscape of reproductive rights is being decimated at a rapid rate. We are officially entering into midterm season, and it sounds like Democrats wanted to show voters that they tried to make progress on this issue, that reproductive rights are a priority for the party.
“Abortion is a fundamental right and women’s decisions over women’s healthcare belong to women, not to extremist rightwing legislators,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told reporters. “Every American deserves to know where their senator stands on an issue as important as the right to choose.”
We do deserve that! And here’s what we learned about purported Democratic Senator Joe Manchin: He’s the absolute worst. (Just kidding, we already knew that.)
Manchin voted with Republicans to filibuster the bill and block it from even coming up to debate. He was the only Democrat to do so.
Right now, Democrats technically hold a majority in the Senate, if we count Vice President Kamala Harris as the 51st tie-breaking vote. But the presence of Manchin (as well as Kyrsten Sinema, frequently) severely undermines that majority. More importantly, Republicans have come to rely on the filibuster to block debate on any and all Democratic legislation, and that takes 60 votes, not just a simple majority, to overcome.
Manchin and Sinema are the two Democrats currently opposing filibuster reform. Since neither of them is up for reelection this year, Democrats need to pick up two seats in the midterms in order to have any chance of progressing bills like this one in the future. (A good reminder to register to vote, call your reps, etc, etc.)
(image: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
