WASHINGTON -- The Senate on Wednesday failed to advance legislation that would write the constitutional right to abortion into federal law -- a symbolic gesture that Democrats promise will be only a first step in a larger strategy to mobilize Americans around reproductive rights as the Supreme Court considers overturning Roe v. Wade and related decisions.
Wednesday's vote -- which failed 49-51, well short of the 60 votes necessary under Senate rules -- was largely a reprise of a failed February vote staged by Senate Democratic leaders, but the issue took on new resonance earlier this month after the leak of a draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito suggesting that the Supreme Court is poised to reverse Roe and curtail guaranteed nationwide access to abortions.
All 50 Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., opposed moving ahead on the bill.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Democrats have acknowledged that the vote was about mobilizing voters, not passing legislation in a Congress where Democrats hold majorities but do not have the votes to defeat Republican filibusters or change the Senate rules to eliminate them.
"This question will not go away," Schumer said Wednesday before the vote. "Americans strongly oppose getting rid of Roe, and they will be paying close attention from now until November to Republicans who are responsible for its demise."
"This vote clearly suggests that the Senate is not where the majority of Americans are on this issue," said Vice President Kamala Harris, who called the vote in a symbolic show of support by the White House. "A priority for all that care about this issue -- the priority -- should be to elect pro-choice leaders."
Alexis McGill Johnson, president of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement that the fight for abortion rights was at "a tipping point" and promised a nationwide campaign of voter engagement, starting with a series of rallies Saturday in dozens of U.S. cities. "We will not back down, and we will not forget those who put politics over our health and rights," she said.
But signs abounded this week that, despite pledges to take action, Democrats have yet to coalesce around an overarching strategy to spark and sustain a public backlash capable of pushing abortion rights back to center stage in American political life and motivating voters to turn out in the November midterms -- and beyond -- to elect candidates willing to defend them.
The lack of a long-range plan of action has become conspicuous after the leak of Alito's draft ruling, which represented the culmination of a nearly 50-year effort by conservatives to reverse Roe and pave the way for state efforts to heavily restrict or even ban abortions.The frustration was captured recently by California Gov. Gavin Newsom-D, who responded to the leaked opinion last week by asking, "Where the hell's my party? ... Where's the counteroffensive?"
Many Democrats responded to the leak by calling on the Senate to again debate eliminating the filibuster -- the 60-vote supermajority rule that allows a united minority to block most legislation -- even though a January test vote on voting rights legislation showed that there is not enough support for it among Democratic senators.
COMING UP WITH A PLAN
A group of lawmakers has begun meeting to strategize next steps on related measures, thinking through what the Democrats can advance through legislation or administration action. The effort is being led by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and consists of the other female senators in Democratic leadership: Sens. Debbie Stabenow of Mich., Elizabeth Warren of Mass., Catherine Cortez Masto of Nev., Amy Klobuchar of Minn. and Tammy Baldwin of Wis., according to a Senate Democratic aide.
Interviews with lawmakers this week revealed clashing views over how best to highlight the looming threat to abortion over the coming months, including whether to hold votes on narrower bills that would protect only a portion of the rights secured by Roe and related cases but could serve to more sharply highlight the depth of the Republican opposition.
One such decision was to call up a bill Wednesday, the Women's Health Protection Act, that is substantively identical to the legislation that failed in February rather than consider alternatives that could have won support from the Senate's two Republican supporters of abortion rights, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, or Manchin, who has campaigned as an abortion-rights opponent but signaled Wednesday that he would be open to preserving the status quo.
Collins and Murkowski objected to a lack of religious freedom protections in the Democratic bill -- a notion Democratic leaders contest -- and no serious effort was made to address their concerns, senators and aides involved in the issue said.
However, party leaders agreed to drop some fact-finding language from the bill, softening some of its partisan edges. On Tuesday, one Democrat who previously had withheld public support for the bill, Sen. Bob Casey of Pa., announced his backing. Manchin, however, did not, telling reporters Wednesday that the current bill "expands" abortion rather than preserving it.
REPUBLICAN STANCE
Republicans have called Democrats extremists and sought to refocus public attention on other issues, such as inflation and crime. In his daily floor speech Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., gave lengthy remarks panning Democratic policies "that fueled this runaway inflation" before turning his attention to the abortion rights bill, which he decried as "extreme and radical."
"They're not even attempting to nuance this at all," Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., said. "It's all, you know, abortion up to the point of birth ... which doesn't even attempt to try and win over people who might be persuadable if they were a little less aggressive in their approach. They've decided they're going full monty on this."
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, who proposed a narrower bill to codify Roe, said the Democratic bill was championed by "far-left activists."
The Democratic bill outlaws any limitation on abortion before fetal viability, while allowing abortions after viability "when, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient's life or health."
Many Democratic lawmakers said Wednesday's vote should be the first of many, arguing that House and Senate votes on even partial protections that have no chance of becoming law are a reliable way to focus public attention on abortion issues over the next six months before voters cast their midterm ballots.
MORE VOTES TO COME?
"You guys are all covering it, right? This will be in the papers all over the country. It'll be on the nightly news. It'll be on talk radio," said Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-Ill., a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "I think of the old saying: It's important to be caught trying, and we're going to try really hard to do everything we can to highlight this."
Some others, however, said they were not inclined to water down their efforts -- at least not at first.
"Let's start with the bill that fully protects women who need access to abortion," Warren said Tuesday. "Starting by chopping down on that is the wrong direction. Women deserve full citizenship, full liberty, and our bill tomorrow will provide exactly that."
Warren said she favored highlighting access to medication abortion, which comes as a spate of Republican-led states have pushed to place restrictions on prescribing and shipping the pills. She said a Senate vote was one option, which would be just as likely to fail as Wednesday's measure, but she also suggested that executive actions from President Joe Biden could be more appealing.
"Votes are [an] important part of it, but it will not be the only actions that we should be focused on," she said, noting the Food and Drug Administration's authority over medication abortions: "Right now, the rules are too restrictive. Women need better access, so there'll be lots of things we'll be talking about over the next six months."
Holding votes on even narrower guarantees of abortion rights is also under consideration, several Democrats said -- such as measures guaranteeing access to abortions in cases of rape or incest or in cases where the health of the mother is at risk. But many said they were wary of moving in that direction before the Supreme Court issues its final ruling, and some acknowledged privately that holding "show votes" on narrower bills could actually benefit Republicans by allowing some senators to distance themselves from the GOP's most conservative elements.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., the lead author of the Democratic abortion rights bill, said he would be "very surprised" if Alito's opinion -- which holds that the Constitution "makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision" -- is ultimately adopted by the court.
"It is so strident, so brash and unjudicial that I would be surprised if any court, let alone the United States Supreme Court, issues this decision without softening the edges and modifying the extremist language," he said. "But the result will be the same. The result is radical and extreme, and we need to keep pushing that result."
One option that Blumenthal and some other Democrats are floating is to hold votes protecting other rights besides abortion that have been secured by Supreme Court decisions rooted in the same legal theory as Roe -- rights that are not enumerated in the Constitution but have been inferred from the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. Those include, among other things, the right to contraception and same-sex marriage.
"I can't tell you right now all the different ways that we should be highlighting what a danger this poses for other rights that are based on the right to privacy," Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, said. "There's an entire range of issues, constitutional protections that will, I think, be in jeopardy."
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., told reporters Wednesday "there may well be additional legislation we need to pursue," citing in particular the potential threat to contraceptive rights. But he said any such decision would not be made until the high court actually rules.
The legislative strategy on Capitol Hill is being hashed out in tandem with a broader strategy on how to harness grass-roots distress at the looming threat to Roe. Planned Parenthood and its action arm reported a tenfold increase in people signing up to volunteer for mobilization efforts less than 24 hours after Politico first published Alito's draft opinion. NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights group, netted its largest amount in a single day, garnering a 1,403% increase in donations compared with the day before the leak.
FOCUS ON FILIBUSTER
Scores of lawmakers and some abortion rights groups, like NARAL, have pushed for eliminating the filibuster to codify Roe. NARAL President Mini Timmaraju said in a statement that her group "supports passing the Women's Health Protection Act by any means necessary, including ending the filibuster," while 114 House Democrats signed a letter Monday pushing Schumer to do the same.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., the top Democratic vote counter, said there's been "no serious discussion" about whether to eliminate the filibuster after Wednesday's vote failed. And Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, who publicly advocated this year for ditching the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation, said Tuesday that he was not convinced it should be jettisoned under the current circumstances.
"Today's annoying obstruction is tomorrow's priceless shield, and we've got to think about it that way," King said, raising the prospect of a national abortion ban. "We've got to think more than a month or two weeks ahead."
Polls show a solid majority of voters support abortion rights, although they also reflect substantial backing for at least some limits on the procedure.
Schumer was clear that short of passing legislation, he wanted to show Americans "where every single U.S. senator stands" on the issue. He warned Wednesday that if Republicans won control of the Senate in November, they would outlaw abortion nationwide.
"A national ban on abortion is the extreme of the extremes, and it is now possible in a Republican Senate," he said, noting that McConnell had said as much last week.
The Biden administration Wednesday said it strongly supported passing the legislation, saying the "urgency" has never been greater.
"The president looks forward to working with Congress throughout the legislative process and signing the Women's Health Protection Act into law," the administration said in a statement that made no mention of the fact that the bill had no path to passage.
Information for this article was contributed by Mike DeBonis, Rachel Roubein, Leigh Ann Caldwell and Marianna Sotomayor of The Washington Post and Annie Karni of The New York Times.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, leads other members of the House Progressive Caucus from the Senate chamber Wednesday after the group protested ahead of a procedural vote on the Women’s Health Protection Act. (AP/J. Scott Applewhite)