Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced he would force a vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), despite the knowledge that it would very likely fail. With some key senators, like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voting no, the bill did, in fact, fail, in a 49-51 vote.
In a statement prior to the vote, Schumer said he moved forward with the vote, knowing it would fail, so Americans could see the senators’ voting record on the issue. “Every American will see how they voted,” he said. “And I believe the Republican party, the MAGA Republican party, will suffer the consequences electorally when the American people see that.”
The WHPA had previously been deemed as “destined to fail” in outlets like the Washington Post, as the bill was a radical attempt to go far beyond simply codifying Roe v. Wade into law. The bill would have allowed abortion through all nine months of pregnancy, up until the moment of birth, for any reason. It also would have eliminated all state-level protections for preborn children, and mandated that states could not pass bans on abortion prior to viability; typically, viability is set at about 24 weeks gestation, though with medical advancements, premature children are surviving younger and younger, making viability a meaningless standard.
READ: Senate to vote this week on making abortion a ‘right,’ overruling all state protections for preborn
Additionally, by making abortion a right codified in legislation, the WHPA would have destroyed conscience protections, meaning health care professionals could potentially be forced to participate in abortions if they want to keep their jobs, and taxpayers in every state could be forced to pay for abortions as well.
The bill also would have made abortion a free-for-all across the country. Any standards abortion facilities are currently held to would be eliminated, and there would be virtually no restrictions on abortionists or abortion procedures. Abortionists would not be required to perform any tests before committing an abortion. This would include ultrasounds, which are vital to correctly diagnosing a woman’s gestational age, and ensuring there is not a life-threatening extra-uterine (ectopic) pregnancy. Abortion pills would also be allowed to be dispensed through the mail.
Few Americans support this kind of pro-abortion extremism. A 2022 Marist poll found that 71% of Americans support significant restrictions on abortion. This includes limiting abortion to within the first trimester, banning the use of taxpayer funds in abortion, opposing sending abortion pills through the mail, and protecting conscience protections for health care professionals. This is in line with past polling, which has routinely found that Americans do not support abortion on demand, at any time, for any reason, with taxpayer funding. The abortion extremists who continue to back the WHPA are only continuing to prove how out of touch they are with the constituents they claim to support.
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