Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have officially doomed any chances that Democrats will pass any legislation to protect women’s rights to abortion.
According to Axios, both senators said Tuesday “they plan to uphold the filibuster in the wake of the leaked draft decision from the U.S. Supreme Court on overturning Roe v. Wade, denying Democrats the necessary votes to protect abortion rights.”
Manchin said that the filibuster must be preserved in the Senate, arguing that “it is the only protection we have in democracy.”
Meanwhile, Sinema said she supported abortion rights but would not bend on the filibuster in order to allow Democrats to pass legislation to protect that right.
“Protections in the Senate safeguarding against the erosion of women’s access to health care have been used half-a-dozen times in the past 10 years, and are more important now than ever,” she said.
Earlier this year, Democrats’ attempted to end the filibuster in order to pass voting rights legislation. But their effort failed thanks to Manchin and Sinema.
With the filibuster in place, Democrats have very few legislative options to try to stop the Supreme Court from carrying out a decision that would end the nationwide right to an abortion as they would need to be joined by 10 Republicans to meet the 60-vote threshold required to pass laws.
