Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe last week (is overturned the right term here?), I have seen plenty of my liberal friends asking some questions or falling into despair about what has happened. It is awful that women’s reproductive rights have been extremely set back by this decision, but now is not the time to give up. So allow me to answer a few questions about that keep popping up.
Why didn’t the Democrats make this a law?
Okay, so the House did try, but it did not go anywhere in the Senate because they do not have enough. You see, because of the filibuster, it takes 60 votes to pass anything that is non-budget related or confirmations. The Democrats only have 50 Senators.
Why not end the filibuster?
Unfortunately, two of those fifty Democratic Senators (Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema) are against ending the filibuster. And no, Joe Biden cannot pass an executive order to just end the filibuster (the Senate makes their own rules for the parlimentary procedures).
Ewww, Manchin & Sinema? Can’t we just kick them out of the party?
Sure, but then we would lose the majority in the Senate and guess who would become the Senate Majority Leader? Our old pal Mitch McConnell. And guess what power the Majority Leader has? He decides what bills are brought to the floor for a vote. Remember Merrick Garland? Yeah, Mitch decided not to vote on his Supreme Court confimation and that is why we have Neil Gorsuch.
Can’t Biden just pass an EO legalizing abortion everywhere?
He could try, but it would be shot down in court in like thirty seconds.
Wait, didn’t Obama have a super majority back in the day? Why didn’t he codify Roe?
There were way more pro-life Democratic Senators back then. If I remember correctly, many of the fights about the ACA were with his own party’s senators who pushed against abortion coverage (I believe Ben Nelson was the biggest holdout, but I could be wrong).
President Biden should just pack the court! He can do that, right?
Yeah, he could appoint four more Justices to get the total to 13, giving the liberal side a 7-6 majority. That is definitely within presidential power. But, I believe they would need to go through the confirmation process, which means a vote. I do not think Manchin or Sinema would go along with court packing.
This is hopeless! What can we do???
It is not hopeless. It sucks to hear this right now, but the main thing to do is support blue candidates. This means voting in every election for Democrats. Yeah, I know you have been told this a thousand times, but it is still true. You want Pennsylvania to become one of those states that has full abortion bans? Then allow Doug Mastriano to be elected. Or we can elect Josh Shapiro who will fight for women’s reproductive rights.
John Fetterman is running against Dr.Oz for Pat Toomey’s Senate seat. We need Fetterman to win. That gives the Democrats 51 Senators, which takes Manchin off the board. Fetterman has said repeatedly that he will vote to end the filibuster. There are a few other winnable states as well as a few states that we desperately have to hold. So that means VOTING!
In the meantime, there are numerous ways to get involved. Here is a great section at Vote Save America that has useful links. Also, we can demand that our current Senators and House members vote on these things (force them to hold a vote on ending the filibuster so we can have them all on record–that way if we do gain those two seats, none of them can say “oh, I never said I would end it!”). Same goes for voting on the abortion bill over in the House. Yeah, it will lose, but having folks on record as for or against something can be powerful.
This is not the end. Conservatives have been doing this for like fifty years. They were patient and realized it would take time to get what they want. Fortunately, we have the numbers on our side, we just need to get the message out to people that the way to end this is to vote for Democrats. VOTE VOTE VOTE!!!
