Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) asked the Senate to amend its rules and pass sweeping legislation that would codify Roe v. Wade at the federal level.
Since Senate Democrats managed to get to 50 seats in the 2020 election, many progressives have called upon lawmakers to nix the filibuster — which sets a 60-vote threshold for passing legislation. Indeed, the rule has inhibited several key Democratic agenda items — including bills to assert federal control over elections and extend federal power over nondiscrimination laws in cases related to self-identified LGBT individuals.
On Monday, Jayapal added to those calls — suggesting an end to the filibuster in order to federalize abortion law.
We cannot count on Donald Trump’s conservative Supreme Court to protect abortion rights.
It’s time to end the filibuster and pass the Women’s Health Protection Act.https://t.co/hGxpCntfFb
— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) December 28, 2021
The Women’s Health Protection Act aligns with the Biden administration’s promise to codify Roe v. Wade — the 1973 case in which the Supreme Court claimed that abortion is protected under the Fourteenth Amendment. According to a press release from Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), the legislation — which already passed the House of Representatives — would “guarantee equal access to abortion everywhere… free from medically unnecessary restrictions that interfere with a patient’s individual choice or the provider-patient relationship.”
Among other state-level actions, Baldwin’s release noted an attempt to ban abortion completely in Oklahoma. The ministers and activists behind this effort explained to The Daily Wire that Jayapal’s argument tips the Democrats’ hand — specifically, by admitting that there is no right to abortion to which state governments are obligated to heed.
“That abortion supporters are working to codify legal abortion federally is only further confirmation of the obvious: abortion is not a right recognized by the Constitution or federal statute,” Free The States communications director James Silberman told The Daily Wire. “There is no federal right to abortion, and there is nothing resembling a right to abortion. There was a rogue court which invented the ‘right to abortion’ from whole cloth.”
“What are constitutionally guaranteed, on the other hand, are the rights to life and equal protection,” Silberman continued. “Equal protection for preborn children is a mandate for every public official.”
Dusty Deevers — a pastor at Grace Community Church in Elgin, Oklahoma, and a producer of the new abortion abolitionist documentary “A Storm Comes Rolling Down The Plain” — told The Daily Wire that pro-life laws do little more than establishing “legal precedents for when, where, and how to murder innocent preborn children.”
“Over 48 years and more than 63 million abortions, pro-life laws — though well intended — have not established equal protection and justice for the preborn,” he said. “All governing authorities have been established as God’s avenging servants for His purpose of carrying out His wrath on the evildoer (Psalm 82; Proverbs 20:10; Romans 13:4). God commands these authorities to judge justly, neither showing partiality to the wicked, nor using unequal standards, which are abominations.”
Deevers continued: “Governing authorities at every level have a duty before God to uphold justice, asserting their God-ordained and constitutional authority to establish equal protection under the law for all — born and preborn — by interposing, ignoring, or nullifying iniquitous decisions when other authorities condone such injustices as the legal taking of innocent life (Daniel 3; 1 Kings 12; 2 Kings 11; Jeremiah 26:10-16, 36:9-31, 37:11- 21, 39:7-10).”
Silberman added that the bill to which Baldwin was presumably referring — the Equal Protection and Equal Justice Act, which “would have fulfilled the biblical and constitutional mandate for governing officials to afford all human beings the rights to life and equal protection of the law” — was filed in nine other states this year. “The abolitionist movement is growing rapidly, and legislators around the country are waking up to the moral and legal necessity of immediate abolition.”