Biden supports exception to obstructionism to protect abortion rights

US President Joe Biden said Thursday that he would support a filibustering or filibustering exception in the Senate to protect access to abortion, after the Supreme Court suspended federal protection of abortion rights.

Filibusterism is a tactic used in political assemblies or other deliberative bodies to delay or prevent agreements, taking advantage of any opportunity offered by the necessary procedure for it.

“If filibustering gets in the way, it’s like voting rights,” Biden said at a news conference in Madrid, where he is attending a NATO summit.

The president expressed that “there should be an exception to filibustering for this case to deal with the decision of the Supreme Court.”

As a former senator, Biden has been reluctant to back changes to filibustering, which allows any member of the Senate to block action on legislation unless it receives 60 votes out of 100 in the House.

However, earlier this year he favored circumventing the rule on voting rights and has now made it clear that he is willing to do so on abortion as well.

Biden’s proposal would require every Democratic senator in a 50-50 split chamber to support it, but at least two of them, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, have disagreed.

The president is under pressure to take possible executive action to protect abortion rights, but his options are limited. On Friday, he will meet with governors to discuss abortion and has said he has “announcements to make.”

At Thursday’s press conference, Biden sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion and reiterated his warning that other constitutional protections could be in jeopardy.

“Something that has been unsettling is the unusual conduct of the United States Supreme Court in overturning not only Roe v. Wade (the precedent that protected the right to abortion), but basically also threatening the right to privacy,” he said.

Voting rights legislation that Democrats and civil rights leaders said was vital to protect democracy failed in January when Manchin and Sinema refused to support Democrats to prevent Republican filibustering.

The result was a painful defeat for Biden and his party at a time when he was in the first year of his presidency.

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