Even as President Biden signed an executive order last week to shore up some reproductive rights protections, his administration has been echoing the message that it’s up to Congress to codify the right to abortion into law. Despite its dire chances in the Senate, the House is set to pass a bill that will restore the abortion rights taken away by the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling and stop states from implementing abortion limits, CBS News reports.
The Women’s Health Protection Act of 2022 is an updated version of the bill the House passed in September. While in good faith, the bill failed to get passed a procedural vote in the Senate by a 49-51 vote, with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-VW) siding with the Republicans. Manchin’s reasoning back then seemed ignorant to the fact that 61% of Americans believe that abortion access should be legal.
“Make no mistake, it is not Roe v. Wade codification,” he said of the Women’s Health Protection Act. “It is an expansion. It wipes 500 state laws off the books, it expands abortion, and with that, that’s not where we are today. We should not be dividing this country further than we’re already divided, and it’s really the politics of Congress that’s dividing the country.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) also rescinded her previous support for the bill, claiming that the legislation did not “provide sufficient protection to antiabortion health providers.” The House vote comes on the heels of Senate Democrats’ town abortion protective measure called the ‘Freedom to Travel For Health Act of 2022, which would ban legislation prohibiting women from traveling for abortion access.