Democratic Senator Admits He Opposes Any Legal Limit on Abortion before a Baby’s Due Date

Congressional Democrats used to at least pretend to support legal limits on abortion after a baby was developed enough to survive outside his or her mother’s womb, but an increasing number are openly admitting they don’t support any limit at all through all nine months of pregnancy. 

On Fox News Sunday, former vice president Mike Pence said: “Joe Biden and the Democrats actually support taxpayer funding of abortion all the way up to the moment of birth. That’s supported by maybe ten percent of the American people.” Democratic senator Ben Cardin of Maryland was later asked on the program by host Shannon Bream to respond to Pence (emphasis added): 

BREAM: So you signed on to a Senate bill called the Women’s Health Protection Act of 2023. Critics say it goes far beyond Roe, and it actually codifies what the former vice president was saying there. So what is the Democrats’ position? Where do you draw the line? 

CARDIN: Well, we support Roe v. Wade. We thought that was established law. It was established law for almost 50 years. The Supreme Court decision was a radical decision that reversed the rights of women to make their own health-care decisions. So we support Roe v. Wade, we support the right of women to be able to make their own decisions about their reproductive rights, and it shouldn’t be subservient to what state legislatures are doing. 

BREAM: But what about the states where it’s actually legal up until the due date? Is that something Democrats support? 

CARDIN: We support the right of women to make their own decisions. This is a personal decision made by women with the advice of their doctors and their family, and we don’t think we should try to tell women when they can make those decisions. 

BREAM: Is there a cut-off for you before that point? 

CARDIN: No, to me, it’s a reproductive — it’s a health-care decision. It’s up to women to make that decision.

The position explicitly articulated by Cardin is shared by every Democrat but one in the Senate and one in the House who back the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA). As a National Review editorial noted: 

“When Democrats in Washington speak of “codifying Roe,” what they mean in plain English is protecting a right to kill a baby through all nine months for virtually any reason. The WHPA creates an absolute right to abortion through the first five to six months of pregnancy, and it mandates legal abortion after viability until birth whenever a lone health-care provider — a term not limited to doctors — determines that the continuation of the pregnancy “would pose a risk” to the patient’s life or “health.” The WHPA’s chief sponsor in the Senate has acknowledged the legislation “doesn’t distinguish” between physical and mental health, and the text of the bill instructs the courts to “liberally construe” the provisions of the act. Courts would therefore look to the definition of “health” found in Roe’s companion case, Doe v. Bolton: “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age. . . . All these factors may relate to health.”

The WHPA manages to go beyond the radicalism of Roe in many respects. “Make no mistake. It is not Roe v. Wade codification,” Senator Manchin told reporters on Wednesday. “It wipes 500 state laws off the books. It expands abortion.”

The WHPA would supersede any federal or state law in conflict with it, including long-standing conscience laws protecting health-care workers and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The WHPA would invalidate laws requiring 24-hour waiting periods before an abortion; laws requiring that abortion facilities provide information about adoption to pregnant women; laws requiring parental consent or parental notification before a minor obtains an abortion; and even some state laws banning partial-birth abortion. Many of these have been previously upheld by the Supreme Court under Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Courts could rule that the WHPA mandates taxpayer-funded abortions, but Democrats have made it clear they would enact the policy with separate legislation if needed.

The bill that supposedly protects women’s health protects sex-selective abortion — the practice of aborting a baby girl simply because a boy is wanted — and would forbid states to enact the kind of health and safety regulations meant to protect women from the likes of the butcher Kermit Gosnell.