With the legislative session and the conventions in the rearview mirror, Democrats in Connecticut are turning their focus to the U.S. Senate and the upcoming vote to codify Roe v. Wade and the impact it could have on the 2022 Elections.
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy was on Fox News Sunday talking about the issue, which was at the forefront of his party’s mind during the nominating convention this past weekend.
“Well, I don’t like the way that this decision came out. But the outrage here should be about what’s going to happen to women and families in this country,” Murphy told Bret Baier.
He said but that’s not where the focus should be.
“I think it’s interesting that many of my Republican friends are putting their focus on the process here because they really don’t want to talk about the fact that abortion becoming criminalized is something that a sort of small minority of the country supports,” Murphy said.
Murphy said if Republicans win a majority in both chambers and the White House in the next three years they are “absolutely going to pass a national ban on abortation that will affect every single family, every single woman in this country.”
He said he doesn’t buy the Republican argument that this is an issue for states to decide.
This Saturday at the Republican convention, Peter Lumaj, one of the candidates for U.S. Senate said he’s pro-life, but he supports the idea that it should be up to the states to decide.
“They’re sending it back to the states. It’s a 10th amendment issue,” Lumaj said. “So let the states define what abortion is, what life is.”
He said if the liberals in the race want to make it an issue then Republicans are going to have to deal with it, but “that’s their issue.”
In Connecticut, abortion was codified by state statute in 1990, but attempts to get it protected by the state constitution this year fell short of a vote in either chamber of the General Assembly.
“I think this is going to push a lot of people to the polls this November that might have otherwise stayed home because they see that this fight is coming,” Murphy said. “Not just in the state legislature’s but in Washington as well.”
Murphy said Republicans would get rid of the filibuster rule in order to get rid of Roe if they win the majority in the Senate.
A vote on U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal’s 2013 Women’s Health Protection Act has been scheduled for Wednesday in the U.S. Senate. The measure passed the House of Representatives 218-211, but was blocked in the Senate 46 to 48 the last time it came up for a vote.
This week’s vote comes in response to a draft majority opinion by the Supreme Court striking down Roe, threatening fifty years of precedent protecting access to abortion.
At that time a decade ago, “the possibility of Roe being overturned was a far-fetched idea,” Blumenthal said during his acceptance speech Saturday. “A storm way off on the horizon.”
But today, as evidenced by Justice Samuel Alito’s leaked opinion, “that storm is upon us” now.
Blumenthal will hold a press conference at 11 a.m. today on the steps of the state Capitol in Hartford.
