Left-wing Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL), running in the Democrat primary against colleague Rep. Marie Newman (D-IL), said during a recent candidate forum that he was in favor of eliminating the Senate filibuster to “preserve a woman’s right” to abortion because he doesn’t “want to see women die.”
During a League of Women Voters of Glen Ellyn Candidates Forum at the beginning of the month, Casten, advocating for the killing of unborn Americans, said he is “absolutely 100 percent pro-choice in all cases” and that the right to an abortion should not be left up to the state or lawmakers in Washington, DC.
However, after stating it should not be left up to lawmakers, he touted the House of Representatives passing the Women’s Health Protection Act legislation, which is an extreme federal takeover of abortion regulation that would allow late-term abortions. Casten also noted that it “would codify Roe [v. Wade] into law” but that it did not pass in the Senate.
Casten then claimed that he, along with other lawmakers, was sending a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to convince him to “get rid of the filibuster because when we sent that bill to the Senate…to preserve a woman’s right to choose” and stating, “I don’t want to see women die.”
Watch:
The bill Casten was touting showed how radical his stance on abortion is. The “Women’s Health Protection Act,” which he co-sponsored and voted for, has late-term abortion access — up until the moment of birth.
The “Women’s Health Protection Act” that Casten was touting had been passed in the House on a partisan stance by Democrats and himself. Enshrined in the legislation is allowing abortion — until the moment of birth. This year, the extreme federal takeover of abortion regulation legislation failed in the Senate after lawmakers preserved the filibuster.
The Women’s Health Protection Act, as summarized by the Catholic News Agency:
The WHPA would prohibit abortion restrictions or bans “that are more burdensome than those restrictions imposed on medically comparable procedures, do not significantly advance reproductive health or the safety of abortion services, and make abortion services more difficult to access.”
The act’s text lists a series of specific restrictions it would do away with, on everything from limitations on telemedicine to restrictions around viability, which the act defines as the point when a fetus can survive outside the womb — determined by “the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider.”
In fact, Casten also supports having the taxpayers foot the bill for abortions.
He was a co-sponsor of the “Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act,” which would reverse the Hyde Amendment and allow anyone who receives health care or insurance from the federal government — such as Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, and Veterans Administration — to have coverage for abortions.
Newman and Casten are running against each other in Illinois’s Sixth Congressional District due to the new congressional map lines created by the redistricting process. The two Democrats, fighting for their party’s nomination, has the potential to make the district vulnerable enough for a well-placed Republican candidate to go against whoever ends up being the Democrat nominee.
House Republican-aligned groups, such as the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), have gone after both lawmakers in the past, with Newman being named one of the top targets in the midterm elections. After striving to win back the House in 2020, the Republicans left the Democrats with the slimmest majority in modern history and gave themselves the upper hand in the midterms.
To win the majority requires a net gain of only five Republican seats in November, and a lot is on the line in both the House and the Senate. Losing either one could mean the Democrats and President Joe Biden will have a more challenging time passing their partisan agenda items before the next presidential election.
Jacob Bliss is a reporter for Breitbart News. Write to him at jbliss@breitbart.com or follow him on Twitter @JacobMBliss.
Breccan F. Thies is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @BreccanFThies.
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