Biden backs exception to Senate filibuster to protect abortion access

Joe Biden said on Thursday he would support an exception to the Senate filibuster to protect access to abortion, after the supreme court overturned the right in a historic ruling this month.

The term filibuster refers to the 60-seat super-majority needed for most legislation to pass the Senate without being blocked by any single senator.

The rule is meant to help the Senate act as a less volatile chamber than the House, which works on simple majority votes, and to protect the rights of the minority.

Earlier this year, Biden endorsed a carve-out on the issue of voting rights. The move was meant to answer Republican attacks on those likely to vote Democratic, prominently African Americans, but two Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, stood in the way of their party.

Biden also repeated harsh criticism of the decision to overturn Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which guaranteed the right to abortion, and reiterated his warning that other constitutional protections could be at risk from a supreme court tilted right by three justices appointed by Donald Trump.

Clarence Thomas, the senior conservative on the court, has written that other privacy-based rights, to contraception, gay sex and same sex marriage, should be examined.

Thomas did not say another such right, to interracial marriage, was in question. He is Black. His wife, the far-right activist Ginni Thomas, is white.