The filibuster allows senators to prolong debates and prevent legislation from moving along in the upper Congressional chamber.
Vice President Kamala Harris said on Sept. 24 that the Senate should abolish the filibuster to pass legislation to codify the landmark Supreme Court abortion case Roe v. Wade, which has since been overturned.
“I’ve been very clear. I think we should eliminate the filibuster for Roe, and get us to the point where 51 votes would be what we need to actually put back in law the protections for reproductive freedom,” Harris told Wisconsin Public Radio.
“And for the ability of every person and every woman to make decisions about their own body and not have their government tell them what to do.”
Harris has repeatedly said she would sign legislation to codify Roe if elected.
The filibuster allows senators to prolong debates and prevent legislation from moving along in the upper Congressional chamber.
It takes 60 votes to end a filibuster.
It was abolished in 2013 by Democrats for nominees to the executive branch and the judiciary, except the Supreme Court.
It was eliminated in 2017 by Republicans for Supreme Court nominees.
Ending the filibuster is what is known as the “nuclear option.”
Were the Democrats to have the Senate, House, and White House next year, codifying Roe v. Wade would mean that states could not outright ban abortion.
The 1973 decision, which the Supreme Court overturned in 2022, said that women can have an abortion until the fetus is viable.
With Roe v. Wade overturned, 14 states have banned abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and South Carolina ban the procedure after six weeks, while Nebraska and North Carolina do so after 12 weeks. Utah bans abortion after 18 weeks.
Although Democrats had unified control of the executive and legislative branches during President Joe Biden’s first two years in office, Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) opposed eliminating the filibuster, joining all Republicans in preserving the mechanism in what was an evenly divided Senate.
The GOP took back the House in the 2022 midterms.
Manchin said he would not support Harris for president over her announcement.
“She knows the filibuster is the Holy Grail of democracy,” he told CNN. “It’s the only thing that keeps us talking and working together. If she gets rid of that, then this would be the House on steroids.”
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, Biden called for eliminating the filibuster in order to pass legislation to codify Roe v. Wade into law.
“I believe we have to codify Roe v. Wade in the law, and the way to do that is to make sure the Congress votes to do that,” the president said during a press conference in June 2022.
“And if the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights; it should be—we provide an exception for this.”
Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has said that the issue of abortion should be left to the states.
“I’m not signing a ban,” he said during the Sept. 10 debate against Harris. “And there is no reason to sign the ban because we’ve gotten what everyone wanted.”