On Tuesday, U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), along with U.S. Representatives Judy Chu (D-CA), Lois Frankel (D-FL), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Veronica Escobar (D-TX) introduced the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA).
The WHPA has a total of 48 Democratic Caucus co-sponsors in the Senate—all except Sens. Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Casey (D-Pa.)—and 176 total co-sponsors, all of whom are Democrats, in the House of Representatives.
“The enthusiastic rush of Congressional Democrats to sponsor this bill shows once again that the top legislative priority for Democrats is more and more abortions paid for with tax dollars,” said Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life (NRLC).
“The so-called Women’s Health Protection Act would essentially remove all legal protections for unborn children on the federal and state level. The Women’s Health Protection Act is, in effect, a no-limits-on-abortion-until-birth bill,” said Tobias. “Pro-abortion Democrats have yet to hear of an abortion-expansion bill they didn’t like and they are more than willing to push it on to the American people.”
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Tobias continued, “Tragically, the only ones to benefit from such a law would be abortionists and abortion providers such as Planned Parenthood. This legislation endangers women and their unborn children, would expand taxpayer funding of abortion, and would no longer require that a woman be given information about the development of her unborn child.”
Among the protective laws that the bill would nullify:
- Requirements to provide women seeking abortion with specific information on their unborn child and on alternatives to abortion;
- Laws providing reflection periods (waiting periods);
- Laws allowing medical professionals to opt-out of providing abortions;
- Laws limiting the performance of abortions to licensed physicians;
- Bans on elective abortion after 20 weeks when an unborn child is capable of feeling pain;
- Bans on the use of abortion as a method of sex selection. These anti-sex selection laws generally have broad public support in the states in which they are enacted, including support from substantial majorities of women.
The bill would also invalidate most previously enacted federal limits on abortion, including federal conscience protection laws and most, if not all, limits on government funding of abortion.
“This legislation would invalidate nearly all existing state limitations on abortion,” said Jennifer Popik, J.D., director of Federal Legislation for National Right to Life. “This legislation would also prohibit states from adopting new protective laws in the future, including various types of laws specifically upheld as constitutionally permissible by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
