WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — Former Democrat House Speaker and current U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi says her party will eliminate the Senate filibuster to codify nationwide abortion-on-demand if Democrats keep the White House and win enough congressional seats in November, emphasizing the stakes for pro-lifers in the upcoming elections.
Speaking Monday to MSNBC’s Katy Tur, Pelosi – an ardently pro-abortion “Catholic” who declined to pursue her old leadership position in 2022 but intends to seek reelection at age 84 – declared abortion a “democracy issue” about the “freedom to make your own decisions for a woman. It’s a personal decision, it’s an economic decision at the kitchen table of America’s families, if and when they could expand their families or even start their families.”
She dismissed former President and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump’s insistence that future abortion legislation be relegated to the state level, insisting that “no matter what he says, there will be a national abortion ban, and that would be horrible for our country.”
“We have to win it all,” Pelosi declared. “We have to win the White House, with our great president of the United States, Joe Biden, who has a vision for America that is in keeping with the vision of our founders, the sacrifice of our men and women in uniform, the aspirations of our children and their families.”
When told that enacting legislation to codify a federal “right” to abortion would take a supermajority Senate vote under current filibuster rules, Pelosi said, “No it doesn’t. It’s 60 votes in the Senate now, but if we win 50 plus one in the Senate, 50 plus the vice president, we can overturn the 60-vote rule.”
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The Senate filibuster requires that a bill receive at least 60 votes to stop debate and move on to a simple-majority vote for final passage. This requirement has long stymied the dreams of both parties, including past efforts to codify abortion. President Joe Biden has called for both codifying abortion and abolishing the filibuster to make it happen, but the latter objective has been blocked by Democrat Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia.
Sinema has since left the Democrat Party; she and Manchin are not seeking reelection this year, renewing Democrats’ hopes of possibly winning enough Senate seats to abolish the filibuster next year (Kelly will not be up for reelection until 2028).
Democrats are banking heavily on pro-abortion fear to drive turnout for Biden’s reelection this fall, chiefly by tying Trump to the various pro-life state laws that have been allowed to take effect since Roe v. Wade was overturned. With Trump’s comments about pro-life laws causing consternation among one of the Republican coalition’s most devoted voting blocs, Democrats’ insistence that he remains a stealth abortion foe could backfire on them by convincing disgruntled pro-lifers to stay with him, and by highlighting the major ramifications for life should they win a united federal government.
Fourteen states currently ban all or most abortions. But the abortion lobby is working feverishly to cancel out those deterrent effects by deregulated interstate distribution of abortion pills, legal protection and financial support of interstate abortion travel, constructing new abortion facilities near borders shared by pro-life and pro-abortion states, making liberal states sanctuaries for those who want to evade or violate the laws of more pro-life neighbors, and codifying abortion “rights” in state constitutions.
Federally codifying Roe would most likely take the form of the so-called Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill which would go far beyond restoring Roe‘s status quo and make it illegal for states to pass virtually any pro-life laws, including informed consent, parental notification, and even admitting-privilege requirements for abortion facilities.