With 49 votes in favor and 51 against, the “Women’s Health Protection Law” fell 11 short of the 60 votes needed to be fully debated in the 100-member Senate.
All 50 Republicans voted to block the law and were joined by Democrat Joe Manchin.
Before the vote, more than two dozen House Democrats, mostly women, marched from the House of Representatives to the Senate chanting “My body, my decision.” They then entered the Senate chamber and sat quietly along a back wall as the senators debated abortion rights.
Last September, the House of Representatives had approved 218-211 an abortion rights bill almost identical to the one in the Senate.
The rejected bill would create a federal statute guaranteeing health care providers the right to perform abortions and patients the right to receive them.
Though the Senate loss was widely expected, Democrats hope the vote will help propel more of their candidates to victory in the Nov. 8 midterm elections as public opinion polls show strong support among voters. to the right to abortion.
This, in turn, could fuel future attempts to legalize abortion through law.
The action came amid the political firestorm sparked by the leak to the press of a Supreme Court draft showing that its conservative majority is ready to overturn Roe v. Wade of 1973 that guarantees the right to abortion throughout the country.
The decision would leave it up to each state to determine its abortion policies.
If that ruling is confirmed when the high court rules on the matter before June 30, “tens of millions of women will see their freedoms curtailed in the blink of an eye,” the Democratic majority leader in the Senate said on Tuesday. Chuck Schumer.
With information from AFP and EFE