By National Right to Life

Learn More About the Bill

WASHINGTON — Today, Senate Democrats, led by Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) failed to invoke cloture on a bill that would have enshrined abortion in federal law and policies and override nearly all existing state laws.

The motion failed by a vote of 46-48.

“The abortion zealotry of the Democrat majority in the Senate was on full display today,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life (NRLC). “This far-reaching legislation would have run roughshod over the will of the American people and endangered the lives of women and their unborn babies.”

No Republicans supported the measure, and they were joined in their opposition by only one Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.). This extremist legislation, which needed 60 votes to advance, failed to even garner a majority of U.S. Senators.

“The so-called ‘Women’s Health Protection Act’ should be called the no-limits-on-abortion-until-birth act,” said Tobias. “This legislation would have made sweeping changes, including expanding taxpayer funding of abortion, and eliminating requirements that a woman be given information about the development of her unborn child so she can make an informed decision.”

Continued Tobias, “This legislation shows just how rigid and uncompromising the Democratic Party has become on abortion.”

Among the protective laws that the bill would nullify:

• Nearly all Federal limits on taxpayer funding of abortion;
• Conscience protection laws allowing medical professionals to opt-out of providing abortions;
• Requirements to provide women seeking abortion with specific information on their unborn child;
• Laws providing reflection periods (waiting periods);
• Laws requiring parental consent or notification for minors seeking an abortion;
• Laws limiting the performance of abortions to licensed physicians;
• Bans on elective abortion after 20 weeks when an unborn child is capable of feeling pain;
• Requirements to provide women with information on alternatives to abortion;
• Bans on the use of abortion as a method of sex selection, and abortions done based on a diagnosis of a disability, including Down Syndrome.

“This legislation would quash nearly all existing protective state laws,” said Jennifer Popik, J.D., director of Federal Legislation for National Right to Life. “In addition, this legislation also would have prohibited states from adopting new protective laws in the future, even laws specifically upheld as constitutionally permissible by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Popik continued, “With this bill, elective abortion would have become the procedure that must always be facilitated – never delayed, never impeded to the slightest degree.”

On Friday, September 24, 2021, the bill passed in the House by a vote of 218 to 211 with all Republicans and one lone Democrat voting against it.