Sanders: End filibuster, pass ‘strongest possible’ abortion rights bill

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday reiterated his call to end the filibuster in the Senate and urged his colleagues to introduce legislation that codifies abortion rights into federal law “again and again” until lawmakers can “protect a women’s right to control her own body.”

Sanders told host Chuck Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Congress should end the filibuster and then pass an abortion rights bill that all 50 Democrats in the Senate would support amid the looming threat of Roe v. Wade being overturned by the Supreme Court.

“I mean, people cannot believe that you have a Supreme Court and Republicans who are prepared to overturn 50 years of precedent,” Sanders said. “So I think what we should do is on this bill: end the filibuster, do everything that we can to get 50 votes on the strongest possible bill to protect a woman’s right to control her own body.”

The Senate failed to pass an abortion rights bill last week after opposition from both Republicans and moderate Democrat Joe Manchin (W.Va.).

Sanders told “Meet the Press” that Manchin and fellow moderate Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) had “sabotaged” President Biden’s agenda by failing to support crucial legislation and an end to the filibuster in the upper chamber.

“It should not be a head-scratcher. You’ve got two members of the Senate, Sen. Manchin and Sen. Sinema, who have sabotaged what the president has been fighting” for, Sanders said. “You had two people who prevented us from doing it. You have a better word than sabotage? That’s fine. But I think that is the right word.”

Sanders said they should keep fighting to codify abortion rights into law, arguing “nobody should think that this process is dead.”

“We should bring those bills up again, and again, and again,” he said.