Democrats are moving away from relying on the courts—the Trump-McConnell-packed courts—to protect reproductive freedom. At Tuesday’s debate, several backed a plan that’s gaining ground in the party, with Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Cory Booker, and Elizabeth Warren, as well as former HUD Secretary Julián Castro and former Vice President Joe Biden all calling, at least in passing, for Roe v. Wade to be codified in law. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard also mentioned codifying Roe, but with the large step backward into Republican-talking-points world of strict restrictions on third-trimester abortions.
Getting Roe v. Wade through Congress would be its own heavy lift, of course. “Earlier this year, Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) introduced such a bill, but it has not advanced in the Democratic-controlled House and would almost certainly be dead-on-arrival in the Republican-majority Senate,” Mother Jones reports. “A version of this measure was first introduced in 2013.”
Despite the difficulties of passing such a law, though, it would take reproductive freedom out of the courts Republicans have so effectively packed with conservative judges on lifetime appointments. And, as Booker, Castro, and Warren said, this is an issue not just about women in general but about poverty. The strict abortion bans being passed in some states, Booker said, are “another example of people trying to punish, trying to penalize, trying to criminalize poverty, because this is disproportionately affecting low-income women in this country, people in rural areas in this country. It is an assault on the most fundamental ideal that human beings should control their own body.”