Rep. Colin Allred, the Texas Democrat challenging Sen. Ted Cruz in November, said he would support “fixing” the filibuster in part so that a hypothetical Democratic-majority Senate could pass an abortion bill that he claims would codify the Supreme Court’s 1971 Roe v. Wade abortion decision.
Tim Miller, a former Republican and podcast host for The Bulwark, interviewed Allred, a former NFL linebacker and member of the House of Representatives, at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin on Saturday. Miller asked a softball question, suggesting that Allred (along with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris) is not as liberal as his critics suggest, but Allred took the opportunity to pledge to “fix” the filibuster.
“If Kamala Harris gets in there, and if the Democrats hold on to the Senate, if Colin Allred gets in there and there’s 50 Democratic senators, they’re going to kill the filibuster, they’re going to pass the Green New Deal, they’re going to socialize health care, they’re going to expand the Supreme Court to 19 people … is that realistic?” Miller asked, suggesting that anyone who predicts these radical moves from Allred would be mistaken.
Rather than taking the bait, Allred pledged to change the filibuster, a Senate rule that currently requires a 60-vote majority to pass certain forms of legislation.
“The filibuster has to change because it’s broken,” the Democrat replied. “The history of the filibuster, as many Senate observers will know, is that it was used almost exclusively to block civil rights legislation, to block anti-lynching legislation. I’m a civil rights lawyer by training. This is personal for me.”
(While opponents of civil rights legislation did use the filibuster, many others have employed the filibuster, as well, to kill countless other bills. It is no more than a legislative mechanism that can be used for good or bad purposes.)
Allred noted that a previous version of the filibuster would hold up Senate business, while the new version of the filibuster applies “to every single bill, and you have a dual track,” where the Senate can pass other legislation while senators block specific bills through the filibuster.
“It has contributed to hyperpartisanship and has actually made the Senate less functional,” he argued.
Supporters of the current filibuster, such as outgoing Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., and Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., argue that the 60-vote threshold prevents radical bills from passing the chamber and contributes to friendliness in the upper body of the legislature.
“The whole point of the filibuster, like the whole point of the Senate itself, is to provide for a place where we can have considered, deliberative debate, and can forge compromise and consensus among our diverse and currently divided populace,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said in 2021.
Allred noted that in the House of Representatives, where he currently serves, the majority rules. “If you’re not in the majority, you have nothing,” he said. “The Senate doesn’t operate that way, and I don’t want to see it become like the House, but the current filibuster doesn’t work.”
The Texas Democrat insisted, “I want to maintain the bipartisan nature of the Senate,” but he called for altering the filibuster in a way that would enable Democrats to “codify Roe v. Wade.”
“And so, to me, we do have to reform it. We have to fix it. We have to go back to the original formulation for it,” he said. “That is also why we will codify Roe v. Wade and make it the law of the land.”
But the Democrat did not explain how “fixing” the filibuster would help Democrats pass legislation to “codify Roe v. Wade.”
In September 2021, Allred voted with most of his fellow Democrats to pass HR 3755, the Women’s Health Protection Act. He has co-sponsored the legislation, claiming that it “would codify Roe v. Wade into federal law.”
Yet the bill goes further than Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision in which the Supreme Court reinterpreted the 14th Amendment of the Constitution to include a right to abortion. The court ruled that states could not ban abortion before the term of “fetal viability,” the point at which an infant can survive outside the womb. The court overturned that decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), returning the issue of abortion to the states.
While some states have restricted abortion to early in pregnancy before babies can feel pain, others have extended abortion up until the moment of birth.
The Women’s Health Protection Act specifically states that the right to abortion “shall not be limited or otherwise infringed.” It would have allowed abortion providers to determine whether a pregnancy is considered “viable” or not, effectively enabling abortions at any point.
“Make no mistake. It is not Roe v. Wade codification,” Manchin, who broke from his party and voted against the legislation, said in 2022. “It wipes 500 state laws off the books. It expands abortion.”
Allred went on to suggest that banning abortion involves forbidding the removal of a nonviable fetus in an ectopic pregnancy (where the embryo lodges outside the uterus, usually in a fallopian tube). He noted that two Texas women sued hospitals, claiming the hospitals refused to treat their ectopic pregnancies for fear of Texas’ abortion law, yet he did not note that Texas law does not forbid treating ectopic pregnancy and that those procedures are not abortions.
Allred did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment by press time.
