Take Action Now! Contact Your Senators!

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on cloture on H.R. 3755/S. 1975, the so-called “Women’s Health Protection Act,” on Monday, Feb. 28, when members return to Washington, D.C., from recess. The bill was introduced in the 117th Session of the U.S. Congress on June 8, 2021, and would enshrine into law abortion-on-demand and would overturn existing pro-life laws and prevent new protective laws from being enacted at the state and federal levels. This bill seeks to strip away from elected lawmakers the ability to provide even the most minimal protections for unborn children, at any stage of their pre-natal development.

This bill has been introduced in the U.S. Congress by pro-abortion Representatives and Senators since 2013. There is increased focus on this legislation this year after the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, on the question of whether all prohibitions on abortions performed pre-viability are unconstitutional.

The bill passed the House on Sept. 24, 2021, by a partisan vote of 218-211. All Democratic and Independent Senators, except Sens. Manchin (D-WV) and Casey (D-PA) have signed on as co-authors.

If the bill receives the required 60 votes to move forward and then passes the Senate, it would invalidate nearly all existing state limitations on abortion and prohibit states from adopting new limitations in the future, including various types of laws specifically upheld as constitutionally permissible by the U.S. Supreme Court. The WHPA would also invalidate most previously enacted federal limits on abortion, including federal conscience protection laws and most, if not all, limits on government funding of abortion.

For instance, the WHPA would:

• Invalidate state laws on elective abortion after 20 weeks — laws that are supported by sizeable majorities nationwide. These abortions occur past the point at which unborn children can experience pain. Additionally, the law would invalidate state laws limiting abortion even after viability, unless they allow each abortionist to abort based on his assertion that an abortion will preserve emotional “health.”
• Invalidate state laws that provide women with specific information on their unborn child (informed consent requirements) before receiving an abortion, including the providing of information about whether her child can feel pain, the ability to view her unborn child on an ultrasound or hear her baby’s heartbeat, the providing of information about fetal development, information that a medication abortion can possibly be reversed, and even information regarding legal responsibilities of biological fathers to provide economic support if she decides to carry her child to term.
• Invalidate state laws where a mother is provided alternatives to abortion.
• Invalidate state laws providing for reflection periods (waiting periods).
• Invalidate state lawsallowing medical professionals to opt out of providing abortions.
• Invalidate state laws on the use of abortion as a method of sex selection (abortions which the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose),
• Invalidate state laws regarding parental involvement and consent of a minor’s abortion.
• Invalidate state laws limiting chemical abortions that are done using telemedicine. These types of abortion occur when a mother is not even in the same location as an abortion provider when she is given drugs to end the life of her unborn child.
• Invalidate state laws that limit the performance of abortions to licensed physicians (meaning that non-physicians could perform and prescribe abortions), and there would be no “requirements or limitations” regarding how an abortion facility is regulated and maintained.
• Grant extraordinary immunity from constraints or accountability to the practices of the abortion industry, or any segment of that industry, or even of an individual practitioner.

Life-affirming laws such as the ones mentioned above generally have broad public support in the states in which they are enacted, including support from substantial majorities of women.

According to pro-abortion groups, if this law is enacted, abortion-on-demand would be allowed in all 50 states, even if Roe vs. Wade is weakened or overturned. Elective abortion would become the procedure that must always be facilitated — never delayed, never impeded to the slightest degree.

Take Action Now! Contact Your Senators!