In 2017, Leaders McConnell and Schumer received a letter pleading for the protection of the filibuster, the sixty-vote threshold needed to end debate and advance legislation. The letter noted the preservation of the filibuster would ensure the Senate could continue “to serve as the world’s greatest deliberative body.” It was signed by then-Senator Kamala Harris.
Presidential candidate Harris is of a different mind. Last week, in an interview with Wisconsin Public Radio, Harris declared that she wants to “eliminate the filibuster for Roe and get us to the point where fifty-one votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom.” Her disregard for the world’s greatest deliberative body is now only eclipsed by her disregard for the sanctity of human life.
Where Biden sometimes struggled to say the word “abortion,” Harris shouts it. In fact, she doesn’t want to “put back” Roe, but codify law that exceeds its parameters, championing the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA). The bill proposes an even more dangerous abortion regime than Roe did. It creates a federal right to abortion at any stage of pregnancy, for any reason, effectively imposing no-limits abortion on all fifty states. Both Harris and her running mate Tim Walz co-sponsored the bill during their respective stints in Congress.
With a Democratic House and Senate, President Harris could make the dissolution of the filibuster a reality. Democrats would be able to shove their radical national abortion plan through, even though polls indicate that most Americans strongly oppose abortion in the second and third trimesters.
When Harris’s agenda is clearly understood, it isn’t popular. Polls consistently show that Americans overwhelmingly support limits on abortion. Even NPR found that over 70 percent of suburban women and nearly half of Democrat women are in favor of restricting abortion after the first three months of pregnancy.
The WHPA plan would strip current pro-life state laws and nullify the authority of states to pass any pro-life protections that reflect the will of voters. It would also permit non-physicians to carry out abortions without requiring a current license and grant an absolute right for “any individual” to transport other people’s minor children across state lines for abortions. And bypassing the Hyde Amendment, it would open wide the spigot of taxpayer funding for abortion, for any reason.
One reason the WHPA is especially dangerous is because it deceptively advertises a viability limit, only to undermine it with broad and undefined health exceptions. This bill hands the abortionist—the very person with a direct financial stake in the procedure—the ultimate authority to define “viability” and “health” as he or she sees fit. This loophole allows for abortion at any stage.
Abortionists aren’t coy about what they’re doing. Colleen McNicholas, chief medical officer for a large Planned Parenthood affiliate, stated under oath: “My practice includes [abortion] through the point of viability, and as we previously discussed, that could be at any point.” Warren Hern, a late-term abortionist of over fifty years from Colorado, explained to The Atlantic that he believes the viability of the child in the womb “is determined not by gestational age but by a woman’s willingness to carry it.” Under this flexible definition, there’s hardly any abortion he can’t justify—including sex-selection abortions, which he’s performed on more than one occasion.
And while abortion lobbyists and WHPA supporters paint late-term abortions as rare, the sad truth is that in 2020 nearly 56,000 children were aborted at fifteen weeks or later. That is enough to fill every seat in Dodger stadium per year. Even the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, the former research arm of Planned Parenthood, has admitted for years that most late-term abortions involve healthy women carrying healthy babies.
Unsurprisingly, Harris immediately received pushback even from within her own party after announcing her support for removing the filibuster to pass an abortion mandate. Outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin, who has staunchly defended the filibuster for years, is refusing to endorse Harris, warning that the move could “destroy our country.” Manchin is equally clear-eyed on her abortion legislation, the WHPA, saying, “They're trying to make people believe that this is the same thing as codifying Roe v. Wade. . . . This is not the same. It expands abortion.”
Vice President Harris seems to give little thought to destroying a centuries-old governmental tool in the service of her abortion expansion ambitions. In fact, she says the filibuster’s removal is all in service of “reproductive freedom.”
And yet, it is Harris and the Democrats that don’t believe voters in conservative states should be freely given the right to determine pro-life laws. Or the freedom to extend the right to life to babies in the womb. Or even the freedom from using their own tax dollars to fund others’ elective abortions.
In 2017, Harris reminded Senate leaders not to “curtail the existing rights and prerogatives of Senators to engage in full, robust, and extended debate.” It was through the filibuster that those rights could be realized.
Emily Erin Davis is Vice President of Communications at Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. She has written for USA Today, Newsweek, Fox News, and more.
First Things depends on its subscribers and supporters. Join the conversation and make a contribution today.
Click here to make a donation.
Click here to subscribe to First Things.
Image by Gage Skidmore, provided by Wikimedia Commons, via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
While I have you, can I ask you something? I’ll be quick.
Twenty-five thousand people subscribe to First Things. Why can’t that be fifty thousand? Three million people read First Things online like you are right now. Why can’t that be four million?
Let’s stop saying “can’t.” Because it can. And your year-end gift of just $50, $100, or even $250 or more will make it possible.
How much would you give to introduce just one new person to First Things? What about ten people, or even a hundred? That’s the power of your charitable support.
Make your year-end gift now using this secure link or the button below.
