Biden votes to overturn Roe v. Wade

It was a new era in Washington in 1981, and abortion rights activists were terrified.

With an anti-abortion president, Ronald Reagan, in power and Republicans controlling the Senate for the first time in decades, social conservatives pushed for a constitutional amendment to allow individual states to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that had made abortion legal nationwide several years earlier.

The amendment — which the National Abortion Rights Action League called “the most devastating attack yet on abortion rights” — cleared a key hurdle in the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 1982. Support came not only from Republicans but from a 39-year-old, second-term Democrat: Joseph R. Biden Jr.

“I’m probably a victim, or a product, however you want to phrase it, of my background,” Mr. Biden, a Roman Catholic, said at the time. The decision, he said, was “the single most difficult vote I’ve cast as a U.S. senator.”

The bill never made it to the full Senate, and when it came back up the following year, Mr. Biden voted against it. His back-and-forth over abortion would become a hallmark of his political career.

As Mr. Biden prepares for the possibility of a third presidential run, women’s rights leaders and activists in both parties are recalling these shifts on abortion, which are likely to draw fresh scrutiny in a Democratic primary race where women are expected to make up a majority of voters.

Mr. Biden entered the Senate in 1973 as a 30-year-old practicing Catholic who soon concluded that the Supreme Court went “too far” on abortion rights in the Roe case. He told an interviewer the following year that a woman shouldn’t have the “sole right to say what should happen to her body.” By the time he left the vice president’s mansion in early 2017, he was a 74-year-old who argued a far different view: that government doesn’t have “a right to tell other people that women, they can’t control their body,” as he put it in 2012.

Read the rest at: Biden

Picture of The Real Side

The Real Side

Posts categorized under "The Real Side" are posted by the Editor because they are deemed worthy of further discussion and consideration, but are not, by default, an implied or explicit endorsement or agreement. The views of guest contributors do not necessarily reflect the viewpoints of The Real Side Radio Show or Joe Messina. By publishing them we hope to further an honest and civilized discussion about the content. The original author and source (if applicable) is attributed in the body of the text. Since variety is the spice of life, we hope by publishing a variety of viewpoints we can add a little spice to your life. Enjoy!

Leave a Replay

Recent Posts

Sign up for Joe's Newsletter, The Daily Informant