The Anti-Abortion Crusade For The Filibuster
Anti-abortion forces are campaigning to protect the filibuster and crush voting rights — and Democrats may be content to let them win.
by ANDREW PEREZ
The nation’s most prominent anti-abortion group has been leading the campaign to protect the Senate’s legislative filibuster, in order to ensure that Democrats don’t pass voting rights protections.
The right-wingers promoting the filibuster have been fully transparent about their goal: They want to block a federal voting rights law so they can elect more anti-choice politicians and to protect the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority that’s threatening abortion rights. It’s one more piece of evidence that defending the filibuster isn’t about preserving a rarified legislative tradition — it’s all about rigging the game to maximize conservatives’ power.
So far, some Democrats seem content with allowing conservatives to win the argument and are refusing to end the filibuster — while other party lawmakers are considering weaker rule changes that might not do anything to help Democrats actually pass a voting rights bill.
Last year, the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List) helped launch the Election Transparency Initiative, with the stated goal of blocking Democrats from passing a national voting rights bill that would undo new Republican voter suppression laws around the country. Central to that effort: defending the filibuster, the Senate rule requiring 60 votes to advance most legislation.
In a press release announcing the initiative, the SBA List said the effort would include opposing H.R.1 — the strongest voting rights and democracy reform bill that Democrats have considered — and “mounting a vigorous defense of the filibuster and current Senate rules governing the reconciliation process, so as to prevent the worst of the pro-abortion Democrat agenda: unilaterally passing H.R.1. and expanding the Supreme Court.”
According to Pew Research survey data from last year, roughly six in ten Americans believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
In recent months, the Election Transparency Initiative has been running ads pressuring corporate Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — the two Democrats who have publicly opposed filibuster reforms — not to allow any changes to the filibuster.
“For a century the filibuster has been a bedrock senate tool ensuring bipartisanship,” says one video ad from the Election Transparency Initiative. “Ending it means more dysfunction. Thankfully, Sen. Joe Manchin pledged to protect the filibuster, despite partisan pressure to cave. If Manchin sides with liberal elites to weaken the filibuster with carve-outs for Democrats' priorities, he would violate the trust of voters. Tell Manchin: Keep your promise. Protect the filibuster.”
A similar version has aired recently on West Virginia radio stations.
An Arizona ad from the group says: “Congress is broken and extreme politicians want to make it worse by abolishing the senate's 60-vote filibuster rule. Sen. John McCain knew better and pledged preservation of the filibuster to ensure bipartisan cooperation. Thankfully Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has promised to honor McCain's legacy and protect the filibuster. But if Sinema votes to eliminate or weaken the filibuster, she would be just another hypocritical politician.”
Manchin and Sinema, the Democratic Party’s rotating villains of choice for the Biden era, have both publicly resisted calls to end the filibuster, arguing that Senate Democrats and Republicans should learn to work together instead — a fantasy that plays into the hands of groups like the SBA List that want to eliminate abortion access and restrict voting rights as well as corporate lobbyists who want to prevent Democrats from passing any bills that could threaten their clients’ profits.
With the GOP blocking voting rights legislation all of last year, Democrats are now once again considering a number of potential filibuster reform options, with President Joe Biden imploring them on Tuesday to change the rules “whichever way they need to be changed to prevent a minority of senators from blocking action on voting rights.”
It’s not clear yet whether Democrats can win over Sinema or Manchin, even though the West Virginia senator backed filibuster reforms a decade ago. And some of the more limited filibuster reform ideas Democrats are discussing might not even functionally end the GOP’s legislative blockade and help to pass a voting rights bill — a reminder that Democratic lawmakers are much more comfortable failing the public than the donor class and are fine with Republicans setting policy.