As Americans become increasingly dissatisfied with U.S. abortion policies in the wake of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, a bipartisan group of lawmakers has announced another attempt to codify Roe v. Wade.
“Congress must restore women’s rights to make personal health care decisions,” said Senator Tim Kaine (D-Va.), one of the group members. It also includes Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Ark.), Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
In the 1970s, Roe v. Wade established abortion protections in the U.S. Even though around 60% of Americans surveyed by the Pew Research Center prior to the Dobbs ruling said they would prefer for abortion to be legal in all or most cases, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively overturned those protections in its opinion last summer. According to the Guttmacher Institute, the ruling came with “bans, confusion and chaos.”
“Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, we’ve seen significant erosion of women’s reproductive rights in numerous states across the country – changes that have taken away rights and regressed access to women’s healthcare by decades,” Murkowski said.
According to data released Friday by Gallup, “Americans are more dissatisfied with U.S. abortion policies now than they have been at any point in Gallup’s 23-year trend, and those who are dissatisfied are three times as likely to prefer less strict rather than more strict abortion laws.”
Gallup’s data indicates that dissatisfaction with abortion laws has reached a record high of 69%. This represents a 16-point jump compared to January 2022, before the Dobbs opinion.
Shortly after the opinion was delivered in June, some legislators unsuccessfully attempted to pass a bill that would codify the Roe v. Wade protections. Republicans and Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted against it.
In August, the bipartisan group of senators attempted to codify abortion protections again with the Reproductive Freedom for All Act. It reintroduced the bill Thursday.
“In the wake of the Dobbs decision, we have seen just how necessary Roe v. Wade was, which is why I’ve worked with my colleagues to find common ground on this bipartisan compromise that would restore Roe’s protections,” said Kaine.
Overall, the Reproductive Freedom for All Act would: prohibit state regulations that impose an undue burden on a woman’s access to pre-viability abortions, while allowing states to enact reasonable restrictions on post-viability abortions – provided that states cannot ban abortions that are necessary to protect the life or health of the mother. The legislation would also protect access to contraceptives and preserve conscience protections.
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