Anti-abortion leaders are hailing the “strong pro-life voice” of House Republicans after the party passed two
abortion
measures in the lower chamber last week, among the first to be considered by the new Congress.
The measures will likely be blocked by the Democratic-majority Senate and President Joe Biden, but Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, said the GOP’s control of the House allows the movement to “create a very high-profile public conversation” around abortion.
As the country enters the
post-
Roe v. Wade
era
, with the Supreme Court removing itself from the political question of what limits should be placed on abortion, activists like Dannenfelser are advising lawmakers on what legislation to bring forward, with an eye toward putting Democrats on defense ahead of the 2024 elections.
“I like to see exactly what they’ve begun, which is they began with a strong pro-life voice and two strong pro-life votes,” Dannenfelser told the Washington Examiner at the 50th annual
March for Life
in Washington, D.C., on Friday, the first since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling in June.
“We are looking and hoping and supporting efforts to introduce a gestational limit and then also a no-taxpayer-funding-of-abortion bill that I believe is in the plans to vote on,” she said.
‘FAR FROM COMPLETE’: MARCH FOR LIFE CHARTS NEW COURSE 50 YEARS AFTER ROE
Voter enthusiasm among Democrats following the Dobbs decision hurt the GOP in the midterm elections, in which a hoped-for red wave failed to materialize and Republicans ended up with a slim five-seat majority in the House and Democratic control of the Senate. How the party should approach the abortion issue is one of the biggest questions Republicans are grappling with as centrist voices like Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) call the party “tone-deaf” for its early focus on abortion restrictions.
Yet forcing Democrats to take votes on abortion bills most of the public would support could create a “leverageable” contrast in the coming election, Dannenfelser said, and allow conservatives to paint Democrats as extreme, a tactic Democrats employed effectively last cycle.
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who took the Mississippi law banning abortion at 15 weeks to the Supreme Court, told the Washington Examiner that Congress and state legislatures must advance legislation that supports women and children so mothers don’t feel pressured to choose abortion out of desperation.
That action needs to take place at both the federal and state level, activists say.
“In Mississippi, we are in a call of action working with our legislature to work on having affordable, accessible quality childcare, workplace flexibility schedules … child support enforcement — because for too long, women have borne the burden of financial responsibility,” she said. “So to have fathers be equally responsible for their children is significant — and then also, we’re addressing and working on the adoption and foster care system that is failing.”
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Several members of Congress attended the March for Life, including House Majority Leader
Steve Scalise
(R-LA) and Congressional Pro-Life Caucus Chairman Chris Smith (R-NJ), who both spoke at the rally. In his address, Scalise told the crowd that conservatives must now prepare for the “next phase” of the movement.
Republicans passed two pieces of anti-abortion legislation in the first week of the new Congress: the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, sponsored by Rep. Ann Wagner (R-MO), and a resolution to condemn violence against crisis pregnancy centers. In May, House Democrats passed the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would have enshrined the right to abortion at the federal level, but the bill failed in the Senate.
