Republican congressmen demonstrated this Wednesday that the ban on abortion continues to be one of their priorities, after approving, in one of the first votes of the new legislature, an initiative to protect the “newborn.”
A total of 220 Republicans in the House of Representatives (the lower house of Congress) voted ‘yes’ to a bill introduced by Missouri Republican Congresswoman Ann Wagner, while 210 Democrats voted against.
It is unlikely that this project will succeed, since the Democrats have a majority in the Senate and the initiative would have to be approved in the upper house and then ratified by President Joe Biden.
The choice of this law as one of the first to be voted on by the 118th Congress, which began on Saturday morning with a Republican majority in the Lower House, shows that the fight against abortion and the defense of life will be one of its priorities, reported the Efe news agency.
It also shows that the more conservative wing of the Republican Party will have a lot of power in the House of Representatives, as evidenced by the recent election of Kevin McCarthy to the leadership of the House, carried out during several votes by some congressmen from his party. , until they expressed their support in exchange for concessions.
The initiative approved this Wednesday, dubbed the “newborn protection law”, seeks to “prohibit a health professional from not exercising the appropriate degree of care in the case of a child who survives an abortion or an attempted abortion.” .
According to Planned Parenthood, the largest network of reproductive services clinics in the US, the bill is “deliberately misleading and offensive to pregnant women and the doctors and nurses who provide their care” and yet another tactic to generate “artificial fear” and stigmatizing abortion. .
Jacqueline Ayers, vice president of the organization’s policy and campaign department, added in a statement that this is “another attempt by anti-abortion politicians to spread misinformation as a means to achieve their twisted goal: to ban safe, legal abortion.”
For her part, the spokeswoman for the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre, referred at the daily press conference that, although the Americans made it clear in the last November elections that they are committed to defending women and their right to choose, the republicans are making “deaf ears”.
“The president (Biden) knows that the ability of women to make their own decisions about their health is not negotiable,” he stressed.
Also Wednesday, a Republican initiative to condemn recent attacks on anti-abortion facilities and groups, as well as churches working against abortion, also passed by a vote of 222 to 209.
In June, the US Supreme Court overturned the decision known as “Roe v. Wade,” which since 1973 federally protected the right to abortion up to 23 weeks’ gestation.
The country was immediately divided into different zones, with 18 states, mostly in the South, banning abortion almost entirely, while other states are still fighting legal battles.
The repeal of the right to abortion was possible because former President Donald Trump, who ruled from 2017 to 2021, managed to place three conservative justices on the highest US judicial body. and reinforced the right-wing majority that already existed in that body.
Source: TSF
