Abortion has not become codified in the USA under the leadership of Joe Biden. While the decision in the 1973 case of Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion at the federal level, finds itself under the Damocles sword of the long-awaited new Supreme Court ruling, a new hard blow to the “culture of death” comes from the Congress.
The bill called Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have further liberalized abortion across the country, was defeated in the Senate by a single vote after passing the House in September. The decisive vote was cast by Senator Joe Manchin, the only elected member of the Democratic Party to vote against the bill.
The Women’s Health Protection Act, therefore, failed to pass by a single vote: 51 to 49. In the federal Senate today there is total parity between Democrats and Republicans. Senator Manchin’s vote thus blew the ultimate abortionist dream of his party comrades out of the water.
Manchin turned a deaf ear to the stern warning of the head of his delegation, Chuck Schumer, who proclaimed yesterday, “The American people are watching. The public will not forget which side of the vote senators fall on today.” Schumer then stepped up his game, sounding the alarm about the now upcoming Supreme Court decision: “Today it is the turn of Roe vs. Wade, tomorrow it could be time for a nationwide abortion ban.”
Party-wide opposition
Republicans were more united than ever in rejecting Women’s Health Protection Act. Even Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, well-known “bad apples” in a solidly pro-life party, thought the bill too liberal.
Murkowski and Collins then proposed a less radical text to prevent individual states from imposing “undue burden” on those seeking abortion, but pro-abortionists said the proposal not only fails to preserve the status quo, but also “actually weakens the protections that the current law guarantees.”
Already in late February, Manchin had dissociated himself from the rest of the Democratic senators in the face of a first draft of the Women’s Health Protection Act needing sixty votes in the House to overcome a filibuster, while still expressing support for a congressional codification of the Roe v. Wade decision.
Eugenic abortion foiled
Among the prerogatives of the rejected bill was putting an end to “medically unnecessary visits” for patients seeking an abortion and a ban on asking women why they would want an abortion. Also, even any other state or federal law imposing limits on access to abortion services would have been prohibited.
The Women’s Health Protection Act would have allowed abortion even beyond the fetal viability limit and it would not have required ultrasound scans, even when these are the standard practice for establishing fetal age, precisely because the ultrasound shows the perfect humanity of the baby in the womb and has repeatedly served to change the minds of even the most hardened abortionists and pro-aborts. The bill would eventually have eliminated mandatory waiting periods before performing an abortion, as well as informed consent, and several other health and safety regulations.
Had it passed, the bill that was well and truly stopped thanks to Manchin would have even protected medical abortions performed via webcam and liberalized those performed on the grounds of the child’s race, gender and possible disability. Moreover, it allows even the most extreme abortion techniques, such as dilation & evacuation, a procedure that literally dismembers the fetus.