With the Supreme Court Ready to Gut Roe, Amy Klobuchar Says Congress Needs to Act—and Fast

“The most sane route to get this done right now would be…to codify Roe v. Wade into law.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) addresses a rally at the US Capitol in September.Chip Somodevilla/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of Mississippi’s Gestational Age Act, a controversial state law banning almost all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Through their lines of questioning, the court’s six conservatives strongly indicated that they’re likely to overturn—or at least gut—the court’s seminal ruling in Roe v. Wade, which prohibited abortion bans before the point of fetal viability, or about six months.

On Sunday’s Meet the Press, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said the pro-choice response should come from her congressional colleagues: Turn Roe’s protections into federal legislation, taking Americans’ access to abortion out of the justices’ hands altogether.

“I think the most sane route to get this done right now would be to bring this up before the US Senate to codify Roe v. Wade into law,” Klobuchar told host Chuck Todd.

The 1973 Roe decision barred individual states from enacting restrictions that outlawed abortions before fetal viability. In one scenario, the Supreme Court could weaken abortion rights by undoing this portion of Roe, allowing Mississippi and other states to decide when in a pregnancy to cut off abortion access. (Earlier in the term, the Supreme Court heard arguments on the constitutionality of Texas’ Senate Bill 8, an even more extreme abortion ban that outlaws the procedure after six weeks.)

A Congressional move to codify Roe would preempt states from constraining or virtually erasing abortion rights. It would also keep abortion access from varying wildly across states, which would mean more of the prohibitively long drives and flight driven by the Texas law—and would force others, especially poorer people, to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Klobuchar said on Sunday that a federal abortion law would prevent that inequitable “patchwork” of laws, noting that some pro-choice Republicans have signaled support for the idea.

Democrats have floated the idea of passing a federal law enshrining abortion rights for years: In 2007, during his first presidential campaign, Barack Obama promised that it would be “the first thing I’d do as president.” In the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, candidates including Klobuchar cited pro-choice legislation as a key part of their reproductive rights platforms, and President Joe Biden has said that his administration is “committed to codifying Roe v. Wade.” A group of House Democrats have drafted legislation doing just that—which passed the House in September. But its progress has stalled in the Senate, where the bill needs a filibuster-proof 60 votes to pass. With Democrats’ slim majority in the upper house, Klobuchar said, she and her colleagues are “looking at the rules” regarding filibusters.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate