A bill to protect the right to abortion fails in the United States Senate

Senate Democrats from USA did not get enough votes on Wednesday to move forward with a bill aimed at protecting the abortion at the federal level, a right that the Supreme Court seems poised to eliminate in the coming weeks.

The initiative was shipwrecked in a key vote, since the Democrats did not get the 60 supports necessary for it to begin being debated in the Senate.

LOOK: Keys to understand what is at stake if the Supreme Court revokes the right to abortion in the United States

With the US Vice President, kamala harrischairing the session, All 50 Republicans voted en bloc against, while the Democrats one by one voted in favor while shouting: “aye!” (Yes).

The only Democrat who broke ranks with his party was Joe Manchin, the last to vote and who left the scoreboard at 49 votes in favor and 51 against.

LOOK: What is the “Roe v. Wade” case that guarantees abortion in the United States?

The vote took place in a climate of high tension after last week the Politico media published a draft of a US Supreme Court ruling that points to the revocation of the right to abortion that court enshrined in the historic ruling “Roe vs. Wade” in 1973.

The leak put Democrats on the defensive, as the repeal of “Roe vs. Wade” would allow Republicans to restrict and even eliminate that right by passing laws in state parliaments.

“Today’s vote is one of the most important we will hold in decades,” the leader of the Democrats in the Upper House, Chuck Schumer, said before the vote.

Schumer had promoted the vote with the aim of forcing senators to take a public position despite the fact that it had little chance of succeeding.

Currently, the Senate it is divided in half with 50 seats for the Republicans and 50 for the Democrats, who hold the majority thanks to the tie-breaking vote Harriswho acts as president of the chamber.

Schumer insisted that there will be “real” and “immediate” consequences if the Supreme Court overturns “Roe v. Wade.”

Specific, if the Supreme Court strikes down abortion protection, 26 of the 50 US states will take steps to restrict it.

That would mean that approximately half of the women of reproductive age in the United States, some 36 million, would be left without access to that service in the territory where they live, according to calculations by Planned Parenthood, the largest network of reproductive health clinics in the United States. .

Source: Elcomercio

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