Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) sounded off after Politico unleashed its bombshell report indicating the Supreme Court had the votes necessary to overturn Roe v. Wade.
In a joint statement, Schumer and Pelosi charged that unaccountable conservative justices have “ripped up” the constitution with an “abomination” of decision that has yet to be made official.
“If the report is accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years – not just on women but on all Americans,” the duo said. “The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v. Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.”
The lawmakers further charged that the conservative justices on the Supreme Court “lied to the U.S. Senate” by not protecting Roe v. Wade and “ripped up” the constitution.
“Several of these conservative Justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation – all at the expense of tens of millions of women who could soon be stripped of their bodily autonomy and the constitutional rights they’ve relied on for half a century,” they charged.
“The party of Lincoln and Eisenhower has now completely devolved into the party of Trump,” they concluded. “Every Republican Senator who supported Senator McConnell and voted for Trump Justices pretending that this day would never come will now have to explain themselves to the American people.”
Read @SenSchumer and My Full Joint Statement on Reported Draft Supreme Court Decision to Overturn Roe v. Wade here: https://t.co/KikZO6J873
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) May 3, 2022
Democrats, in general, smeared the ruling and used it as a rallying cry for the upcoming midterm elections.
“If this report is true, this Republican attack on abortion access, birth control and women’s health care has dramatically escalated the stakes of the 2022 election. At this critical moment, we must protect and expand Democrats’ Senate majority with the power to confirm or reject Supreme Court justices,” Democratic Senatorial Campaign Executive Director Christie Roberts said in a statement.
Other Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) took a more extreme path and called upon Congress to immediately pass legislation to codify Roe v. Wade by eliminating the filibuster.
“Congress must pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade as the law of the land in this country NOW,” Sanders tweeted. “And if there aren’t 60 votes in the Senate to do it, and there are not, we must end the filibuster to pass it with 50 votes.”
Congress must pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade as the law of the land in this country NOW. And if there aren’t 60 votes in the Senate to do it, and there are not, we must end the filibuster to pass it with 50 votes.
— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) May 3, 2022
Sanders was joined by fellow colleague Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), who agreed that Congress should vote to end the filibuster. Per Baldwin’s tweet: “If #SCOTUS is going to legislate from the bench and turn back the clock 50 years on #RoeVWade, then the Senate needs to pass my Women’s Health Protection Act, and if we need to eliminate the filibuster to get it done, we should do that too. #WHPA.”
If #SCOTUS is going to legislate from the bench and turn back the clock 50 years on #RoeVWade, then the Senate needs to pass my Women’s Health Protection Act, and if we need to eliminate the filibuster to get it done, we should do that too. #WHPA
— Sen. Tammy Baldwin (@SenatorBaldwin) May 3, 2022
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