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Senator Elizabeth Warren told NBC News Tuesday night that she will not vote for a newly-introduced bipartisan bill that would enshrine federal abortion protections after the Supreme Court's recent ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, a tough blow to the nascent effort that shows it would lack the crucial support of all 50 Democratic senators.
“The Kaine-Collins bill does not codify Roe,” she said plainly, saying “no” she wouldn’t vote for it. Pressed on if this was a question of letting the perfect be the enemy of the good on this, she said “the problem here is this bill is not an obvious improvement over where we stand right now.”
Warren has been a leading agitator for action on the reproductive rights front, prior to and certainly after the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health decision, pressing the administration to do more and urging action on data privacy protections, among other things.
The new bill was introduced Monday by Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, alongside Democratic Senators Tim Kaine from Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
But both because of Warren’s comments and, critically, because they lack the GOP votes to overcome a filibuster (the Senate requires 60 votes to advance legislation to a final vote), the bill is expected to stall.
“We don’t have 60 votes, but I have a feeling that the post-Dobbs reality of 10 years olds being smuggled across state borders,” could change things, Kaine told NBC Monday night. He noted that the bipartisan legilsation was written after the Dobbs decision.
"Our bill is a time machine and we take the law back to where it was the day before Dobbs. And not everybody loved that law, but at least it had the virtue of women had been able to rely on it for 50 years," he added.
Nevertheless, here’s what the so-called Reproductive Freedom For All Act would do:
- Prohibit state regulations that impose an undue burden on a woman’s access to pre-viability abortions
- Allow states to enact reasonable restrictions on post-viability abortions — provided that states cannot ban abortions that are necessary to protect the life or health of the mother
- Protect access to contraceptives
- Preserve conscience protections.
You can read the full bill text here: here.