Lawmakers Mull Responses Following the Fall of Roe

Plus: Mark Meadows’ former aide to testify in surprise January 6 hearing today.

By
33

Good morning. Both chambers of Congress are out this week, so we’ll keep this edition to the point.

With Dobbs Ruling, House Republicans Eye New Abortion Limits

If Republicans take the House in November, members will rally around at least one agenda item with renewed intensity: new federal restrictions on abortions.

After the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last week, lawmakers are considering new avenues to limit abortions. Instead of a 20-week abortion ban that Republicans have passed in the House in prior years, the party could advance a stricter 15-week abortion ban, GOP Rep. Chris Smith said last week. Given the dynamics—a Democratic president still in office and a higher threshold for passing most bills in the Senate—these bills are likely to amount to messaging items without the chance of becoming law, for now.

From CNN’s story:

Start a Free Trial
Get every newsletter and all of The Dispatch. Support quality, fact-based journalism. Get Started ALREADY HAVE AN ACCOUNT? SIGN IN
33
By
Comments (33)
Join The Dispatch to participate in the comments.
 
  1. Avatar photo
    Matt A

    Again, great idea. Blow up the filibuster 6 months before you lose control of Congress. Let us know how that goes.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Pat Riot

      Republicans will blow it up anyhow. Its the difference between getting something and getting nothing.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        Matt A

        That would be pointless. Biden will veto anything they pass.

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photo
          Pat Riot

          They will have a lot of "performance" votes like they did for Obamacare probably. But if Trump wins in 24 they will absolutely disregard the filibuster.

          Collapse
          1. Avatar photo
            Matt A

            If Trump wins in 24, there's no predicting what will happen.
            Very likely that the filibuster will be among the least of our concerns. But voluntarily blowing up guardrails is utter folly. It's loading a weapon then handing it to your enemy.

            Collapse
  2. Token Liberal

    Can congress constitutionally protect or ban abortions? Which enumerated power covers this? It seems like a police power, which is generally considered a state matter. I'm genuinely curious.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Pat Riot

      Insofar as there are Federal laws against (say) murder, then yes, Congress can regulate abortion or ban it. There is already a Federal abortion ban on the books and it was challenged and it stayed intact:

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partial-Birth_Abortion_Ban_Act

      In like fashion, Congress can also override state-level laws and codify Roe for all 50 states. They could also, for instance, allow private abortion clinics to operate on Federal land within red states to provide legal access that way. Or make it illegal for a State to tamper with or criminalize a woman's medication e.g. the abortion pill.

      The ruling used the words, "elected representatives" to drive this point home, but legally speaking there are no SC rulings that can only apply to states and not Congress. That's not how it works.

      Collapse
    2. Avatar photo
      Dusty

      I want to second this question. I’ve heard numerous commentators say that Congress has no authority to pass legislation either codifying Roe or passing restrictions. But I have no clue whether that’s true or not.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        Pat Riot

        It's because Republicans have said "return it to the states" for 30 years in order to make the overturn of RvW more palatable and make their voters in red states believe they could always travel if they needed to solve the problem and the ones in blue states feel secure this would never affect them.

        Collapse
  3. Suzanne

    As usual very informative.
    Maybe I missed the reporting, but wondering how Ugyurs get out of slave camps to tell the their slave horror stories?

    Collapse
  4. Avatar photo
    Jen

    There will be no national legislation on abortion because the filibuster isn’t going anywhere.

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Pat Riot

      ROFL

      Collapse
    2. Avatar photo
      Patrick

      Maybe. But we’ve been griping about top-down party line voting for a while. Perhaps events can force the change we want. We just passed a gun bill with 15 R’s. Is it crazy to think we could find an abortion bill that could get 30 Ds and 30 Rs? I’m not as pessimistic as I would have been a year ago.

      Collapse
      1. Avatar photo
        Jen

        No way you get 30 Rs to support any abortion rights and no way you get 30 Ds to support abortion restrictions. Not happening.

        Collapse
  5. Avatar photo
    Pat Riot

    "If Republicans take the House in November, members will rally around at least one agenda item with renewed intensity: new federal restrictions on abortions."

    Of course they will.

    What's crazy to me is how many Republicans have been taken in by their own party's lies. The "return it to the states" meme has been repeated far and wide by the entire media spectrum, not just the GOP media. But it's a lie and it's always been a lie: if the Constitution does not recognized the Right to your own body--as five Republican justices just ruled--then *any* lawmaking body can criminalize abortion, including Congress.

    The reason for this lie is to assure Republican voters that laws against abortion will not affect **them personally**. That they can go along with their tribe on abortion abolition because they either live in a blue state (recall that almost half of Republican voters do), or they know they can travel to one if the need arises.

    Now that the lie is inevitably dissolving in the present-day reality, many Republican voters are learning a terrifying truth: that those abortion abolitionists in their party also want to remove *their* right to an abortion too. They're actually *serious* about their beliefs and don't just say these things to keep the party coalition together.

    As any couple who has sex knows, birth control isn't 100%. Therefore without the abortion option you cannot have sex without the risk of having a new *child*. (Most abortions are obtained by women who **already have children**).

    Surely millions of Republicans never thought that their vote to own the libs could possibly result in **less sex**, but that's the present-day reality now.

    And perhaps just as terrifying as the loss of your basic rights to your own body, is another terrible, terrorizing fact: now Republicans are going to be forced to **defend a massive new policy**. No more owning the libs. No more justifying your vote without talking about what you voted *against*.

    Now, to vote Republican, you need to explain why your friends should be forced to have **less sex**. Why women should be forced to give birth when they don't want to. Why the laws putting women in prison for having abortions is absolutely necessary. Why border controls stopping US women from *leaving* the country is perfectly normal. The the federal government tracking women's menstrual cycles is absolutely necessary to enforce the law. And so on. Now as a Republican voter you need to make a *positive case* for abortion abolition.

    I suspect this will, at minimum, catch a lot of Republican voters off guard. It might even persuade a few of them to switch back to being a Democrat. Donald Trump, the world's foremost authority on the Republican voting base, sure things so.


    Collapse
  6. Katie

    Does Mitt Romney know how inflation works?

    Collapse
    1. Avatar photo
      Pat @ Tavi Hall

      I could be mistaken, but the money in his bill is already being used, he's just rearranging it into a more fair manner.

      Collapse
      1. Katie

        Good morning! I don’t think as of right now the money is being spent. It is new spending for parents. So since I think inflation is filed by too much money chasing too few goods, wouldn’t giving out free money just add more fuel to the fire? I don’t know, I’m just a nursing student 🤷🏻‍♀️❤️

        Collapse
        1. Avatar photo
          Dave Conant - MO

          It would, but Romney's bill would consolidate a number of current programs and derive part of its funding from them while, at least in theory, realizing some savings by reducing the administrative overhead.

          Collapse
        2. Avatar photo
          Pat @ Tavi Hall

          I may be mistaken but I think Romney very intentionally created a zero funding program by removing other programs for parents. As such, no new funding just reallocation.

          Collapse
          1. Avatar photo
            Pat @ Tavi Hall

            Here's a recent article. It's clear his first proposal did that, I can't tell if this one did too. That's where I would check if I were you.

            https://thedispatch.com/p/romney-revamps-his-family-security

            Collapse
        3. Avatar photo
          Pat Riot

          We ran deficits for the last 20 years with almost no inflation. So no, inflation doesn't work that way.

          We had a world-wide pandemic and now war in Europe involving a superpower: two things that haven't happened in 100 and 75 years respectively.

          That's what caused inflation, not just repeating the thing we've been doing over and over again year after year.

          Collapse