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The battle over abortion rights has become a border war.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, some Republican-controlled states, such as Missouri, have proposed laws that would outlaw crossing state lines to get an abortion.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and fellow Democrats attempted Thursday to pass federal legislation to protect traveling out of state for an abortion. A Republican senator blocked the bill, and its prospects for ever becoming law are slim.
In a speech on the Senate floor today, Wyden expressed anguish over the “sprint” by state legislatures to criminalize abortion.
“In Oregon, we’re fortunate to live in a state that protects women’s health and freedoms,” he said. “Oregon is going to be a sanctuary for people to get whatever health care they need, including an abortion. But this fight can’t just be left up to the states.”
If passed, the bill introduced by Wyden and a dozen colleagues would act as a preemptive measure to proposed laws in anti-abortion states that restrict people from getting out-of-state abortions.
A statement from Wyden’s office says the bill, called “The Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act of 2022,″ would build on existing protections for interstate travel and “would also protect health care providers in pro-choice states from prosecution and lawsuits for serving individuals traveling from other states.”
Senate Democrats sought to pass the bill by unanimous consent, but Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) blocked that gambit Thursday. In a report from Capitol Hill, Forbes was pessimistic about the bill’s prospects: “The Democratic majority in the House means the Ensuring Access to Abortion Act will probably succeed on Friday, though it’s still unlikely to become law, given that it would need 60 votes to clear the Senate—and the similar bill there has already failed.”
Oregon has some of the strongest reproductive rights laws in the nation and is spending $15 million to prepare for an influx of abortion patients.