US President Joe Biden at the NATO summit in Madrid on June 29, 2022. KENNY HOLSTON / AP
Joe Biden spent decades on the Capitol benches. Due to his temper, he dislikes touching his basics, believing in the virtues of tedious “sausage making,” the nickname given to legislative work in Washington. But the seriousness of the moment upsets this tempered instinct. At the conclusion of a press conference in Madrid concluding the NATO summit on Thursday, June 30, Joe Biden took a stand in favor of scrapping the Senate supermajority rule (60 votes out of 100) to allow abortion rights to be enshrined in law.
This project, which has been under discussion in the ranks of the Democrats for months, therefore receives the – essentially symbolic – approval of the White House after the historic decision of the Supreme Court on June 24. By repealing the constitutional right to abortion, it has restored the task of legislation to every state.
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The US President criticized the court’s “scandalous” decision not only for the impact on women’s health, but also for violating the right to privacy. The Roe vs. Wade decision in 1973, which legalized abortion, was based on this principle. Reproductive rights organizations are urging Joe Biden to declare a public health emergency to offer abortion options to women wherever they live. This includes facilitating access to abortion pills. The president has to meet the governors on Friday to discuss it.
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Like many experts, Joe Biden worries that the court’s reasoning, which maintains a literal interpretation of the Constitution, could also be applied to other recently acquired individual rights, such as same-sex marriage. “We need to legislate Roe vs Wade. And the way to do that is for Congress to vote for it. And if the filibuster [obstruction parlementaire] stands in the way, it’s like voting rights, you have to make sure that there is an exception. »
Send a signal to the left
The intention is clear, but the means of realizing it are very unlikely. Democrats hold just 50 out of 100 Senate seats, with Vice President Kamala Harris having the majority vote. That means no one has to go without handing over bills or overcoming filibusters. However, two elected officers, Joe Manchin (West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona), have repeatedly played a dissonant score. Both particularly blocked the adoption of the Build Back Better plan, which revived the welfare state, in November 2021. They oppose abolishing the supermajority principle, rightly pointing out that most Democrats valued it more when Republicans controlled the Senate.
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