Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler confirmed on Friday that the house Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the implications of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
Nadler, D-N. Y., stated in a brief interview what he hopes to accomplish.
The hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday. Nadler doesn't want to name any witnesses expected to appear at the hearing.
The Chair and other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee have been discussing such a hearing since Politico published a draft opinion last week, which revealed that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe, the landmark 1973 decision that protected the constitutional right to abortion for nearly a half century.
The hearing will expose the extremism of this leaked opinion, which is literally undoing 50 years of precedent and signaling that they will go after other privacy rights. No one is safe, said Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., a Judiciary member and co-chair of the bipartisan Women's Caucus.
This is really about women and their reproductive freedom. It is also about girls - that really affects me when I think about my daughters and my three granddaughters - that if something happened to one of my granddaughters and they needed reproductive freedom, they wouldn't have it under this regime over here, Dean pointed out, pointing her finger at the Supreme Court building.
The hearing comes as President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats struggle to respond to the high court's decision to overturn Roe. The Supreme Court confirmed the authenticity of the draft last week, but said in a statement that it does not represent a decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case. Senate Republicans, along with Sen. Joe Manchin, successfully blocked a House-passed Democratic bill that would have enshrined abortion-rights protections into federal law. The vote was 49 -- 51, a far short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a GOP filibuster.
Democrats are using other political tools to draw attention to the issue ahead of the midterm elections, where both Democratic House and Senate majorities are at stake. That includes hearings, like the one next week, but also news conferences and rallies.
On Friday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi joined scores of House Democrats — many dressed in pink — at a rally urging Americans to participate in the protests set for this weekend in cities across the country.
They pledged to keep the pressure on the Senate to pass the Women's Health Protection Act. Before Wednesday's failed vote, House Democrats marched to the upper chamber chanting: My body, my decision! My body, my decision! Pelosi said at the rally that they will be doing it every day to protect those who seek care and those who provide care. The hearing could look at unintended consequences of a Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe, including the repercussions of in vitro fertilization, said Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga. chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee that oversees the courts.
It's going to be an ongoing process and Congress needs to look at the ramifications of the decision, the effects that it will have on the people of the country, and it's going to be an ongoing process, Johnson said.
The Republicans don't know what to do next, because they caught the car and they don't know what to do. They are not fully aware of the ramifications of overturning Roe v. Wade. If they are, they don't care. Nobody really knows what's going to happen.