Senate Democrats want to pass legislation that would remove all restrictions on abortion in any state. If they’re successful, America would be one of the world’s most liberal nations in access to abortion, surpassing China.
The Senate is scheduled to vote Wednesday on a bill that Democrats say would codify the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion on demand.
But the legislation would go far beyond Roe to allow virtually unlimited abortion in all 50 states.
“The Women’s Health Protection Act would prohibit any government anywhere from doing anything that could, even potentially, reduce the number of abortions from actually taking place,” Thomas Jipping, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, writes in a commentary for The Daily Signal.
The Senate legislation would “require every government everywhere to repeal any statutes, regulations, or anything else that may already be on the books that could potentially have that effect [of reducing abortion],” Jipping writes.
The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.
America already allows abortions in pregnancy earlier than most other countries. only seven, China and North Korea are two examples of countries that allow elective abortions after twenty weeks of pregnancy.
North Korea does not have any laws that specify a limit on the gestational age at a time when a woman may have an abortion. China is slightly more conservative in restricting abortions of children based on sex. according to the pro-choice Center for Reproductive Rights.
The Women’s Health Protection Act would move America past China, ending any restrictions that prevent abortions based solely on the sex of the unborn baby.
According to the European Union, 47 of 50 countries limit elective abortions to 15-weeks in Europe. Charlotte Lozier Institute.27 European countries prohibit abortions after 12 weeks.
European nations do not allow abortions after birth, but some liberal states, such as California or New York, allow them.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., reintroduced the Women’s Health Protection Act following the leak of a draft Supreme Court majority opinion in the abortion case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
Leaked opinions indicate that the high courts is poised to uphold Roe v. Wade, and send the abortion issue back to the states for decision.
Schumer’s Women’s Health Protection Act, which the pro-life organization Susan B. Anthony List dubs “The Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act,” would remove all protections for unborn babies.
At this moment in history, “safe, legal, and rare is so far in the rearview mirror” of pro-abortion advocates, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said Tuesday during a teleconference with reporters.
Dannenfelser listed state abortion laws that she said would be overturned if Democrats succeed in passing the Women’s Health Protection Act, describing them as:
Laws requiring abortions to be performed by a physician; informed Consent laws, including ultrasounds and safety regulations for women; parental involvement; rights of hospitals, Catholic or not; all state and Federal laws that conflict, including RFRA, The religious Freedom Restoration Act; conscience protections; limitations on taxpayer funding for abortion. [including] the Hyde Amendment; parental notification laws; informed consent laws; ultrasound and waiting periods; pain-capable laws, laws prohibiting discrimination; abortions on the basis of race, sex, and disability … , and limits on late-term abortions.
Schumer’s legislation also doesn’t use the word “women,” but instead refers to someone who gives birth as a “person.”
The act isn’t expected to clear the House and the Senate, since a similar version of the bill failed in the Senate earlier this year.
Because the proposed law would go beyond Roe v. Wade, the bill is “not a codification of Roe,” Dannenfelser said. “It’s a codification of the Democratic platform.”
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