Roe Decision Central To Lehigh Valley Congressional Race

All over America, families are looking for ways to navigate a post-Roe world. Some are taking to the streets to voice their defiance of the ruling that removed bodily autonomy from every woman in America, and others are celebrating their new level of control over those same bodies.

Polling on the issue supports Roe and opposes the recent Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization by a substantial margin, and the decision arriving in the middle of a campaign cycle means that it will very soon become an issue Pennsylvanians will take to the polls.

And the farther apart the candidates are on the issue, the more likely it is to be a determining factor in the race. This may be what we can expect in Pennsylvania’s 7th district, where incumbent Democrat Susan Wild, a vocal supporter of a woman’s right to choose, is taking on Republican Lisa Scheller.

Wild has been outspoken on the issue for some time. When the Supreme Court’s draft decision leaked in May, Wild called on the Senate to join the House and codify Roe into law by supporting H.R. 3755, the Women’s Health Protection Act, adding a strongly worded denunciation of the Court and its actions.

“The draft […] overturning Roe leaves little doubt that the ultra-right has succeeded in its decades-long effort to use the Court to achieve a fundamentalist society in which women no longer have the right to make the most personal decisions about their own bodies.”

After the decision was handed down formally, Wild repeated her call for action, and for a legislative response to the Court’s decision:

“If we wish to be the ‘land of the free’ then the United States Senate needs to be the ‘home of the brave’ and pass legislation that I already co-sponsored and passed in the House, codifying Roe into law and ensuring equal access to reproductive freedom for everyone in this country.”

Scheller has been notably silent on the issue since the decision was handed down. However, her past statements openly supported “criminalizing abortion when there is a detectable fetal heartbeat” – even in cases of rape and incest – and Scheller said she would never vote for a bill to codify Roe v. Wade.

These statements were made during a primary debate in April of 2022, but no recent comments or statements have been released.

The Scheller campaign has not yet responded to requests for comment on the overturning of Roe and what it means for Pennsylvania families.