As expected….
Senate Majority Leader Schumer (Remember him?) does not have the 60 or even 50 votes for this effort , which is just a media act…Democratic West Virgina Senator manchin voted with the GOPer’s to not move the Women’s Health Protection Act up for a vote in the chamber….
The word from new leaks is that the final vote will be 5-4 against Roe v Wade from the High Court justices….
Wednesday’s vote was 51 to 49 and well short of the 60 votes necessary under Senate rules. It was largely a reprise of a failed February vote staged by Senate Democratic leaders, but the issue has new resonance after last week’s leak of a draft opinion from Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. suggesting that the high court is poised to overturn Roe and curtail guaranteed nationwide access to abortions.
All 50 Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) opposed moving ahead on the bill. President Biden said in a statement afterward that the vote “runs counter to the will of the majority of American people” and that congressional Republicans, who cast the Democratic bill as a radical overreach, “have chosen to stand in the way of Americans’ rights to make the most personal decisions about their own bodies, families and lives.”
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and other Democrats have acknowledged that the move was about mobilizing voters, not passing legislation in a Congress where Democrats hold majorities but do not have the votes to defeat Republican filibusters or change the Senate rules to eliminate them.
“Elect more pro-choice Democrats if you want to protect a woman’s freedom and right to choose,” Schumer said after the vote…..