Republican effort to ban abortion after 20 weeks fails in Senate

A large number of US states have already passed various anti-abortion restrictions, but I guess Congressional Republicans must have felt progress on curtailing women’s reproductive rights was too slow, because they took it upon themselves to present a bill that would’ve blocked abortions after 20 weeks, several weeks before a fetus is considered viable and months before many life-threatening defects can be detected.

Thankfully, they just failed.

The Senate rejected a bill on Monday to ban most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy, a largely symbolic vote aimed at forcing vulnerable Democrats to take a stand that could hurt their prospects for re-election in states won by President Trump.

By a vote of 51 to 46, the measure fell well short of the 60-vote threshold required for the Senate to break a Democratic filibuster. The outcome was not a surprise, and the vote fell mostly along party lines.

[…]

The bill, which has the strong backing of the Trump administration, is identical to one that passed the House in October and similar to legislation that has been adopted in 20 states. It would make nearly all abortions after 20 weeks illegal; anyone who performed the procedure could face a potential prison term of five years, fines or both, though exceptions could be made when the life of the mother was at risk, or in cases of rape or incest.

This is good news, but there’s feeble light on the horizon. With Trump in power, we’re only one Supreme Court death or retirement away from seeing a Republican challenge that could overturn Roe v Wade and effectively abolish a woman’s right to choose in the United States. And given how things are going at the state level and the fact that barely more than half of Americans support abortion rights, there’s not an abundance of hope on the legislative front either.

The price of living in a democracy is that the rights, dignity and basic humanity of the few can be blithely overridden on the whims of the many, especially when you have a crumbling education system and rampant conservative-religious influence in politics.