Vice President Kamala Harris called for the Senate to eliminate the filibuster to pass federal legislation to allow nationwide access to abortions.
If enacted, the abortion rights legislation would be a carveout to the 60-vote threshold needed to advance most major policy changes in the upper chamber. It would also override various state-level laws that restrict when a woman can end a pregnancy.
“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe [v. Wade] and get us to the point where we, 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back into law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do,” Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio in an interview that aired Tuesday.
The Senate already ended the filibuster tradition for judicial nominees, when 60 votes were needed to end debate before senators could vote on them. But reforming the Senate’s filibuster rule on legislation requires 51 votes, which Democrats may not have in the next Congress.
At the moment, Democrats have a 51-vote majority thanks to four independents, including Sens. Joe Manchin (I-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), both of whom oppose changing the chamber’s procedures and are retiring at the end of their terms.
Democrats could lose their majority in November for next year if incumbents Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jon Tester (D-MT) lose their races in Ohio and Montana, respectively, in addition to whether Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) does not win her open seat in Michigan. The other competitive contests, such as the ones in Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, are considered to be leaning toward Democrats, according to the Cook Political Report.
President Joe Biden and Harris have previously expressed their support for reforming filibuster rules for abortion access and voting rights, particularly after the Supreme Court repealed the abortion rights precedent of Roe v. Wade in 2022.
“Where we are right now is that our president, Joe Biden, said he will not let the filibuster get in the way of passing the Women’s Health Protection Act,” Harris told a crowd before the 2022 midterm election in Los Angeles. “We need two more senators to get it done. We got to hold on to the Democrats we have, and we need two more senators to get it done. And then we can sign into law the Women’s Health Protection Act.”
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Abortion access underpins Harris’s campaign for the presidency, as evidenced in her ads to her debate earlier this month against former President Donald Trump, after Democrats outperformed expectations in 2022 thanks to the issue and its apparent importance to women.
“Donald Trump hand-selected three members of the United States Supreme Court with the intention that they would undo the protections of Roe v. Wade,” Harris said during their debate in Philadelphia. “And they did exactly as he intended. … One does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government, and Donald Trump certainly, should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”