Biden backs changing Senate filibuster to counter Supreme Court’s ‘outrageous’ Roe v Wade abortion ruling

Mr Biden’s announcement is a break from his previous reluctance to support changing senate rules to make it easier to pass legislation

President Joe Biden speaks during a news conference on the final day of the NATO summit in Madrid, Thursday, June 30, 2022. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) (AP)

President Joe Biden on Thursday said the Senate should make an exception its’ de facto supermajority requirement so Congress can pass legislation to reverse the Supreme Court’s recent decision to allow states to force women to give birth against their will.

Speaking at a news conference at the close of the annual Nato leaders summit, Mr Biden was asked what he tells his counterparts about why many world leaders — and 85 per cent of Americans, according to a recent poll — believe the US is headed in the wrong direction.

Mr Biden replied that the US “is better positioned to lead the world than we ever have been” despite the inflation that has also plagued economies across the globe, and called the court’s ruling more of a destablising force in the US than the record inflation that has left an overwhelming majority of Americans saying the country is on the wrong track.

“We have the strongest economy in the world. Our inflation rates are lower than other nations in the world. But one thing that has been destabilizing is the outrageous behavior, the Supreme Court of the United States, and overruling not only Roe v. Wade, but essentially challenging the right to privacy,” he said.

The president told reporters that the US has long been world leader “in terms of personal rights and privacy rights,” and said the court had made “a mistake” by overruling a half-century of precedent allowing women the right to choose whether to carry a pregnancy to term.

Continuing, Mr Biden said no world leader had expressed any negative opinion of America’s direction to him, but claimed that many had told him “thank you for America’s leadership”.

“I can understand why the American people are frustrated because of what the Supreme Court did. I can understand why the American people are frustrated because of inflation. But inflation is higher in almost every other country, prices at the pump are higher in almost every other country,” he said. “We're better positioned to deal with this than anyone but we have a way to go and ... we have to change that decision by codifying Roe v Wade.

A short time later, Mr Biden was answering another question about what to do in the wake of the high court’s decision when he said he now supports changing Senate filibuster rules to make an exception for privacy rights.

“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. And if the filibuster gets in the way — it's like voting rights, it should ... provide an exception ... to the filibuster for this action to deal with the Supreme Court decision,” he said.

The president’s announcement that he is open to changing Senate rules to pass legislation codifying abortion rights into law is the second time he has allowed for the possibility of upending the upper chamber’s longstanding norms to move his agenda through. In October, he said he’d support a similar carve-out to enable passage of a Democratic-backed voting rights law.

Vice President Kamala Harris took to Twitter in support of a filibuster carve-out for abortion rights shortly after Mr Biden finished speaking.

“We have to codify Roe v. Wade into law,” said Ms Harris, who was formerly one of California’s two senators before beginning her term as vice president. “If the filibuster gets in the way, the Senate needs to make an exception to get this done”.