UPDATE: The Senate voted against this bill.
Today, the U.S. Senate will vote on S.1975, the Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA) which erases state abortion laws to legalize a “right to abortion.”
Current abortion legislation will be repealed under the WHPA, essentially wiping the federal and state abortion slate clean.
The bill passed the House of Representatives on Sep. 24, 2021, and is now being led into the Senate by Chuck Schumer. When announcing the upcoming vote, the New York senator said, “We are here to throw cold water on the flames of anti-women bigotry and affirm five sacred words: Abortion is a fundamental right.”
The National Review reported,
The WHPA refers repeatedly to the ‘constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.' Congress does have authority to ‘enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions' of the 14th Amendment. Those provisions, of course, say nothing about privacy or abortion and, if the Supreme Court overrules Roe v. Wade, no one will be able even to pretend otherwise. There will be nothing for Congress to enforce.
As Roe v. Wade is at risk of being overturned this year, pro-abortion lawmakers are eager to enact new extreme legislation. The WHPA prohibits any limitation or regulation on abortion access, including term limits and requiring a doctor's visit.
The legislation specifies prohibitions “on abortion at any point or points in time prior to fetal viability, including a prohibition or restriction on a particular abortion procedure” and any restriction “on abortion after fetal 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.”
In the last sentence of the quote above, lawmakers leave the definition of viability up to the abortion provider's “good-faith medical judgment.”
The Senate's vote will illustrate our country's value for the sanctity of life, or the lack thereof. After a year of pro-life successes, the WHPA is only one more hurdle in the race to build a post-Roe America.
