Schumer: Democrats will weigh filibuster reform for abortion rights

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced Tuesday that Senate Democrats will discuss creating a “carveout” in the Senate’s filibuster rule to pass abortion rights legislation if they remain in the majority in 2025.

Schumer had previously said Democrats would change the Senate’s filibuster rule to pass voting rights legislation in 2025 if they control the White House and both branches of Congress.

But now the Democratic leader is opening the door to changing the Senate rules to pass legislation codifying Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that established a national right to abortion in 1973. That decision was overturned in 2022 by the Supreme Court in its 6-3 conservative majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

“It’s something our caucus will discuss in the next session of Congress,” Schumer told reporters.

Asked if he personally would support a carveout of the filibuster to protect abortion rights, the leader reiterated: “It’s something our caucus will discuss.”

He made his comments after Vice President Harris, the Democratic nominee for president and a former senator, endorsed changing the Senate’s rules to pass abortion rights legislation.

“I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe,” Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio on Monday. “And get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom and for the ability of every person and e very woman to make decisions about their own body and not have the government tell them what to do.”

That statement drew a strong rebuke from independent Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), a former Democrat, who told CNN he could no longer endorse Harris for president because of her stance on the filibuster.

“Shame on her,” Manchin told a reporter.

“She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy. It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids,” he warned of how such a reform would impact the Senate.

President Biden and Harris said in June 2022 they would support an exception to the Senate’s filibuster rule to protect abortion rights.

“I believe we have to codify Roe v. Wade into law, and the way to do that is to make sure that the Congress votes to do that and if the filibuster gets in the way [there] should be … an exception,” Biden said during a news conference in Spain shortly after the Supreme Court struck down the national right to abortion.