Senators reintroduce bill to codify Roe v. Wade abortion protections

Congress failed to enact similar legislation in the aftermath of the decision and Republican control of the House makes it unlikely any such bill will reach President Joe Biden's desk.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine

A bipartisan group of Senators on Thursday reintroduced a plan to guarantee abortion access and codify other protections after previously doing so in August of last year.

The Reproductive Freedom for All Act would bar states from imposing an "undue burden" on abortion, according to The Hill. It would, in effect, restore the threshold for abortion rights set under the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling.

The justices overturned that precedent last year in Dobbs v. Jackson, returning the power to regulate the procedure to the states. While many deep-red Republican states have enacted total or near-total bans on abortion, Democratic-leaning states have enshrined legal protections to guarantee abortion access.

Congress failed to enact similar legislation in the aftermath of the decision and Republican control of the House makes it unlikely any such bill will reach President Joe Biden's desk, but the senators appear to have responded to Biden's call to restore abortion rights that he made during the State of the Union address this week.

Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va., Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, all pro-abortion lawmakers, crafted the measure.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him onĀ Twitter.