President Joe Biden said on Thursday that he would support making an exception to filibuster rules in order to codify abortion access and the right to privacy into federal law.
A filibuster is a tactic used by a minority group of senators who oppose the passage of a bill. It takes advantage of the rule that 60 votes are needed to stop debate on a bill. Someone can take the floor and speak for hours, even days on end, until a bill’s passage deadline is blown.
Biden made the comments during a press conference at the NATO summit in Madrid, Spain.
Reporters pressed Biden on whether he would take executive action to secure abortion access in the U.S. following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last week.
“The first and foremost thing we should do is make it clear how outrageous this decision was,” Biden said. “I believe we have to codify Roe v. Wade in the law, and the way to do that is to make sure that Congress votes to do that.”
He continued, “And if the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights — it should be [that] we provide an exception to this … requiring an exception to the filibuster for this action to deal with the Supreme Court decision.”
The president also mentioned that he was open to making an exception to filibuster rules for the “right to privacy, not just abortion rights.”
Usually, legislation requires a 60-vote majority to overcome the threat of a filibuster in the Senate.
The Senate is currently split 50-50 between Republicans and Democrats.
Biden has previously called on Congress to codify Roe v. Wade into law, but he had never expressed support for ending the filibuster specifically for abortion access.
At a town hall last year, Biden said he would be open to altering the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation “and maybe more.”
Despite Biden’s newly announced support for making an exception to the filibuster rule for abortion, it does not appear he has the needed support among senators.
Democratic Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have been staunch defenders of the filibuster throughout Biden’s time in office.
A January press release from Manchin reiterated his commitment to defending the filibuster, stating that removing the rule would cause “long-term institutional and democratic damage … to the Senate and our nation.”
“Allowing one party to exert complete control in the Senate with only a simple majority will only pour fuel onto the fire of political whiplash and dysfunction that is tearing this nation apart – especially when one party controls both Congress and the White House,” stated Manchin. “As such, and as I have said many times before, I will not vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster.”
Following Biden’s comments on Thursday, Senator Manchin’s spokesperson, Sam Runyon, affirmed that the senator’s position “has not changed.”
Sinema’s office pointed to an op-ed the senator wrote in The Washington Post last year, which noted that the filibuster was previously used to protect abortion access and block 20-week abortion bans.
Without the support of Manchin or Sinema, Democrats would need to gain at least two Senate seats and maintain their advantage in the House of Representatives in November’s midterms if they want to modify the filibuster rule.
Democratic senators in Madrid attending the NATO summit as part of a congressional delegation were also pessimistic about changing the filibuster, pointing to Manchin’s and Sinema’s stances against changing the rules.
“The notion of changing the rules is really at the mercy of one or two senators,” said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate, speaking to the reality of a 50-50 split in the Senate.
“This is not the political environment to be looking” for “massive institutional change,” Durbin added.
