On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 3755, also known as the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021. The legislation is largely meant to counter the new Texas “Heartbeat Law” and similar legislation that places limits on when a woman can choose to kill her child in utero.
The Democrat-controlled House passed the bill by a 218-211 margin with one Democrat — Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas’ 28 Congressional District — crossing party lines to vote with the GOP.
The bill would would further erode states’ rights with regard to abortion and pre-empt many measures that pro-life states have enacted to protect the unborn. The Women’s Health Protection Act of 2021 looks to do away with ultrasound requirements, most parental notification laws, and many other common-sense requirements that a person must take in certain states in order to receive an abortion.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to bring the bill to a vote shortly after Texas enacted its Heartbeat Law. Pelosi claimed the new Texas law was “the most extreme, dangerous abortion ban in half a century, and its purpose is to destroy Roe v. Wade, and even refuses to make exceptions for cases of rape and incest. This ban necessitates codifying Roe v. Wade.”
Representative Judy Chu (D-Calif.) further expressed the wish of Democrats to codify the flawed Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision into law.
“We have had Roe v. Wade in effect for 50 years. We have been protected by that,” Chu told MSNBC. “It wasn’t until 2011, [when] we saw states pass these medically unnecessary laws — which dictated the width of clinic doors and forced doctors to have medically unnecessary admitting privileges or where they required an ultrasound — that we saw that we just have to get the Women’s Health Protection Act in place, so that … we weren’t playing whack-a-mole with each of these states and their laws.”
Republicans, of course, disagreed, with Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) calling the bill “evil.”
“Today, House Democrats continued their unconscionable attack on life,” Murphy said in a statement. “The Abortion on Demand Until Birth Act is without a doubt one of the most egregious and extreme pieces of legislation to ever hit the House floor. In addition to being an evil assault on the unalienable rights of life and liberty, this bill is also a gross violation of the 14th Amendment — steamrolling states’ right in the name of inexcusable federal overreach. As a practicing physician and lawmaker, it is my obligation to fight for those innocents who cannot fight for themselves. I will always defend the right to life and protect American taxpayer dollars from being used to fund on-demand abortion.”
According to H.R. 3755, “Abortion services are essential to health care and access to those services is central to people’s ability to participate equally in the economic and social life of the United States. Abortion access allows people who are pregnant to make their own decisions about their pregnancies, their families, and their lives.”
It’s a very “woke” piece of legislation, using the term “reproductive justice” several times and claiming that restrictions against abortion are a “tool of gender oppression.”
“Abortion-specific restrictions are a tool of gender oppression, as they target health care services that are used primarily by women,” the legislation states. “These paternalistic restrictions rely on and reinforce harmful stereotypes about gender roles, women’s decision-making.”
A Senate version of the bill sponsored by Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal with no less than 47 co-sponsors is currently making the rounds in that chamber, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) saying that it will be voted on “in the very near future.”
The Senate bill faces an uphill climb in that evenly divided chamber, however, as Pennsylvania Democrat Bob Casey is pro-life. Democrats would need everyone in their caucus to vote for the measure or persuade a Republican to vote with them — which doesn’t seem likely — for the bill to become law.
Although this particular piece of legislation in unlikely to result in any new federal laws regarding abortion, pro-life forces need to understand that that’s the ultimate goal of the pro-abortion movement. Roe v. Wade is an extremely flawed court decision — pro-abortion forces understand this, so they’re looking to codify abortion into federal law as quickly as possible. With Joe Biden in the White House and Democrats in control of both chambers of the legislature, they believe that now is their chance.
