• One Democrat is urging her party to consider using reconciliation to restore Roe v. Wade.
  • But its a long shot since abortion protections wouldn't be considered as falling within the federal budget.
  • Dems have very few options to bring back Roe v. Wade anytime soon.

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, dealing a fatal blow to a decision that guaranteed a constitutional right to abortion nationwide.

Democrats have few options to restore those protections at the federal level. They could tee up another vote in Congress to codify the ruling along party-lines, but that risks setting off a confrontation with Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema while negotiations are underway to salvage President Joe Biden's economic agenda.

The pair of centrists are holding firm in their promises to preserve the 60-vote threshold in the Senate known as the filibuster. That has prompted at least one House Democrat to suggest employing another legislative tactic that Biden used to muscle through his $1.9 trillion stimulus law without Republicans.

"Republican Sens. Collins & Murkowski have a bill to codify Roe. Sen. Manchin today made clear that he would support it," Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan wrote on Twitter. "If we have to use a procedural maneuver to bring it to the floor, then that's what we should do."

A spokesperson for Slotkin confirmed to Insider she was referring to budget reconciliation, a legislative maneuver allowing Democrats to sidestep GOP resistance and approve legislation with a simple majority vote. Democrats employed the tactic twice last year to pass the stimulus package as well as the House-approved Build Back Better bill which later died in the 50-50 Senate.

But it's an arduous process with plenty of rules strictly limiting what can be passed in a reconciliation bill only to measures that impact the federal budget. It's overseen by the Senate parliamentarian, who would likely disqualify an effort to secure abortion protections in reconciliation.

"Under the traditional rules of reconciliation, re-codifying Roe would not be budgetary," Zach Moller, director of the economic program at the centrist-leaning Third Way think tank, told Insider.

Moller added the parliamentarian's decision can be overruled, but that would require all 50 Democrats plus Vice President Kamala Harris to support the idea. "Overruling the parliamentarian would be a form of blowing up the filibuster," he said.

There's no sign Manchin and Sinema would let support weakening the filibuster to revive Roe with that backdoor approach. Neither suggested they were prepared to bring back Roe v. Wade through Congress without attracting GOP support.

"I support legislation that would codify the rights Roe v. Wade previously protected," Manchin said in a Friday statement. "I am hopeful Democrats and Republicans will come together to put forward a piece of legislation that would do just that."

Meanwhile, Biden assailed the Supreme Court ruling as one that doesn't reflect the mainstream view of the American public.

"With this decision, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court shows how extreme it is, how far removed they are from the majority of the country," the president said on Friday. "But this decision must not be the final word."

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