Following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and restore the power of states to set their own abortion policies, some progressives are demanding to know: Why didn’t Democrats pass a federal law codifying Roe when they controlled the White House and had overwhelming majorities in Congress?
Some reporters and pundits have said that Democrats in Congress simply lacked the votes to ever enshrine in federal statute a right to abortion. But a closer look at the last two unified Democratic governments — the first under the Clinton presidency in 1993 and 1994 and the second under the Obama presidency in 2009 and 2010 — shows there very likely were congressional majorities in support of a federal right to abortion. There just weren’t enough votes to enshrine a right as expansive as the one that activists wanted.
