WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden told a group of Democratic U.S. governors on Friday there were not enough votes in the Senate to scrap the filibuster to protect abortion rights after the Supreme Court struck the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.
Biden has urged the Senate to consider getting rid of the filibuster – a supermajority rule that requires 60 of the 100 senators to agree on most legislation – to codify Roe v. Wade’s abortion rights protections into law.
A Democrat who spent 36 years in the Senate, Biden long supported the filibuster but has grown more open to changing it as Republicans have blocked several of his major initiatives, including voting-rights bills.
“As I said yesterday, the filibuster should not stand in the way of us being able to (codify Roe into federal law),” Biden told a virtual meeting of governors from states including New York and California, where the abortions remain legal.
Biden on Thursday proposed that U.S. senators remove the filibuster in order to protect abortion rights but the suggestion was shot down by aides to key Democratic lawmakers.
On Friday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul told the group that “just a handful of states” are going to have to take care of health of women across the country. After the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision, 13 states banned or severely restricted the procedure under so-called “trigger laws”.
“There is such stress out there,” Hochul said. “It is a matter of life and death for American women,” she added.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Susan HeaveyWriting by Rami AyyubEditing by Alistair Bell)
