WASHINGTON – House Republicans gain early Action on abortion with their new majority and on Wednesday approved two measures that make it clear they want further restrictions after the Supreme Court overridden federal abortion law last year.
The new GOP-led House passed a resolution condemning attacks on anti-abortion facilities, including crisis pregnancy centers, and a separate law that would impose new penalties if a doctor refused to care for a child alive after an abortion attempt was born.
Both are not expected to pass the Democrat-led Senate, but Republicans said they would make good on their promises to address the issue along with other legislative priorities in the first few days in power.
“You have no freedom, true freedom, unless the government protects your most basic right, your right to life,” said incoming House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who led the debate on the measures.
Still, the two measures are far from a bold statement on abortion, which has proven to be the case politically sensitive for Republicans since the June Supreme Court decision that ruled Roe v. Wade after nearly 50 years, allowing states to ban abortion nearly or completely. While some Republicans have pushed Expanding the ruling to include a national ban — or a compromise ban that would limit abortion beyond a certain point — many have rejected the option. And it has become clear that most Americans would be against it.
A July AP-NORC poll found Republicans are broadly opposed to allowing abortion “for any reason” and after 15 weeks of gestation. But just 16% of Republicans say abortion in general should be “illegal in all cases,” and a majority, 56%, say their state should allow six-week abortions in general. According to AP VoteCast, a national poll of midterm voters, 61% of all voters supported legislation guaranteeing access to legal abortion nationwide.
National sentiment has made some Republicans wary of the party’s traditionally vehement opposition to abortion rights.
South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, a Republican who says she is anti-abortion, said she believes the early push on the issue was misguided. She said she believes the majority of voters in her swing district opposed the Supreme Court’s decision to overrule Roe.
“That’s probably not the way to start the week,” Mace told MSNBC.
Republicans who supported the two measures took pains not to link them to Roe’s ouster, stressing that they were narrowly focused.
“I want to be absolutely clear that this bill has nothing to do with the Supreme Court’s decision,” said Missouri Assemblyman Ann Wagner, the Republican sponsor of the bill.
Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk said the measures passed on Wednesday reflect what Republicans see as immediate abortion priorities. House Republicans “have yet to have a discussion” about broader changes, namely an abortion ban, he said.
Loudermilk said he thinks the issue should be left to states for now, “or else we’ll start murmuring the waters again.”
Emboldened by public opposition to the Supreme Court decision, Democrats enthusiastically opposed the measures, predicting that Republicans would only lay the groundwork for a national ban.
“The differences between our side of the aisle and their side of the aisle couldn’t be clearer,” said Democratic Chairman Hakeem Jeffries of New York.
Democrats criticized the resolution condemning attacks on pro-life facilities as biased for not condemning similar — and longstanding — violence against abortion clinics. The resolution was “woefully incomplete,” said New York Rep. Jerrold Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
Democrats argued that the legislation imposing new penalties on doctors was unnecessary because it was already illegal to kill a child. It would create complicated new standards that would make it harder for healthcare providers to do their jobs, they said.
“It’s a mean solution in search of a problem,” said Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif.
Last summer, the Democrat-led House of Representatives voted to restore abortion rights nationwide, but that legislation was blocked in the tightly divided Senate. This bill would have expanded the protections Roe previously provided by banning what proponents call medically unnecessary restrictions that block access to safe and accessible abortions.
The GOP bills are destined to suffer a similar fate in this Senate session. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Americans elected Senate Democrats “as a firewall” against what he saw as extreme Republican views.
“Republicans are showing how dangerously they have lost touch with the American mainstream,” Schumer said.
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Associated Press contributors Hannah Fingerhut, Kevin Freking, and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
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