Joe Manchin Votes Against Protecting Abortion Rights Despite Claiming To Support Abortion Rights

Senate Democrats’ attempt to enshrine the abortion protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law resoundingly failed Wednesday, with one of Democrats’ own members, Sen. Joe Manchin, joining every single Republicans to tank the legislation. The Women’s Health Protection Act was shot down 51-49 in a largely symbolic vote that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer nonetheless described as “one of the most consequential we’ve taken in decades.” Perhaps even more consequential, though, was the demonstration of how far Congress is from enshrining women’s reproductive rights into law.

“The American people are watching; the public will not forget which side of the vote senators fall on today,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, addressing the body ahead of the vote. Schumer warned of an “open season” on Americans’ “god given freedoms,” should the Supreme Court overturn Roe without any Congressional action. “Today it will be Roe, tomorrow it will be a national ban on abortions.”

Democrats brought the bill to the floor just over a week after a draft opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito striking down Roe leaked to Politico, which reported that the court’s conservatives had preliminarily voted to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling in a preliminary vote. The anticipated ruling, which breaks with 50 years of precedent, would constitute a dramatic rollback of reproductive rights in America and throw the security of other settled law, including marriage equality, into question. Democrats have joined with reproductive rights advocates in decrying the expected decision, but have struggled to come up with anything they can do about it on the federal level.

The Women’s Health Protection Act, which already passed the House, was never expected to succeed in the evenly-split Senate. No Republicans favor it — not even Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, who say they support reproductive rights but insist the Democratic bill is too far-reaching — and Manchin already joined with Republicans in February to defeat a version of the legislation. He opposed the most recent iteration, too, as well as changes to the filibuster that would be necessary to pass it. Still, Schumer pushed the vote, he said, so “the American people will see where every single U.S. Senator stands.”

Manchin was the only Democrat to vote against the legislation; even Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, who has an uneven record on reproductive rights, announced Tuesday that he would support the bill, saying he has “never voted for — nor do I support — such a ban” on abortion. Manchin said on Wednesday that he would vote for “Roe v. Wade codification,” despite voting twice in three months against legislation to do just that. Murkowski and Collins, meanwhile, have a narrower proposal to prevent states from imposing “undue burden” on those seeking abortions, but reproductive rights advocates say that plan not only fails to protect the status quo, but “actually weakens the protections we have under current law.”

“If these Senators truly cared about safeguarding reproductive freedom in the face of an unprecedented assault from the Supreme court, they could vote for the Women’s Health Protection Act,” NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju said in a statement ahead of the vote.

Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic caucus chair, said before the vote Wednesday that lawmakers would “fight” and “win” to protect the freedom of choice against a “runaway Supreme Court.” How? With the current makeup of the Senate and the Supreme Court, that much is unclear for now.