Speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the House’s second passage of the same bill this Congress and claimed the matter is an election issue to pass the bill in the Senate.
“We must ensure that the American people remember in November because with two more Democratic senators, we will be able to eliminate the filibuster when it comes to a woman’s right to choose and to make reproductive freedom the law of the land,” Pelosi said.
The measure passed 219-210, mostly along party lines.
In response to the Supreme Court’s decision last month in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that struck down the high court’s nearly 50-year-old ruling in Roe v. Wade, Pelosi said the House would again take up the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would make it a right for a woman to go through an abortion, as well as override certain state laws restricting those procedures, including mandatory waiting periods, bans on abortions via telemedicine, or requiring providers have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals.
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Supporters of the bill say it codifies the standards previously set by Roe into law, while challengers contend it would go beyond what Roe permitted by undoing state-level restrictions that had previously been upheld by the courts when Roe was in place.
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Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ), a longtime abortion opponent in the House, said in remarks on the House floor that the bill “is far beyond the American mainstream and far beyond Roe v. Wade.”
The bill, which was enacted by the House last year, failed in the Senate in February, as it could not clear the chamber’s 60-vote filibuster threshold during a procedural vote to proceed to debate, failing 46-48.
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Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who regards himself as personally anti-abortion but backed the legal standard set by Roe, broke ranks with his party to oppose the bill, arguing it went beyond Roe.
Even if Manchin were to change his position on the bill in the absence of Roe, both he and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have reiterated since the Dobbs ruling that they remain opposed to removing the filibuster, leaving the bill with no path forward to pass in the Senate, where it failed to earn even a majority.
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The Dobbs ruling prompted or resumed calls from some Senate Democrats and liberal activists for changes to filibuster rules to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act or other abortion rights legislation, but the party is unable to do so as long as Manchin and Sinema remain in support of the filibuster.
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