WASHINGTON — Efforts to secure the nationwide right to an abortion stalled for a second time Wednesday when U.S. Senate Democrats failed to get enough votes to overcome the legislative filibuster.

Republicans, including Maine Sen. Susan Collins and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, voted uniformly against limiting debate on the bill while Democrats, save West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, voted to advance the measure toward final passage.

The bill, sponsored by Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, would have given health care providers the right to perform abortions and for patients to terminate their pregnancy without having to adhere to 11 different government restrictions. Health care providers would not have been required to perform tests or procedures that weren’t medically necessary or to give patients medically inaccurate information before performing an abortion. Governments couldn’t have banned abortions before the viability threshold, typically between 22 and 24 weeks into a pregnancy, and post-viability abortions couldn’t be restricted when “in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, a continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient’s life or health.” Health care providers could not be restricted from prescribing medication for abortion as long as it was based on “current evidence-based regimens or the provider’s good-faith medical judgment, other than a limitation generally applicable to the medical profession.”

The 49-51 procedural vote was the second time this year Senate Democrats have attempted to advance a bill to codify the right to an abortion. But it was the first vote on abortion access since Politico published a leaked draft opinion from Associate Justice Samuel Alito showing the U.S. Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade within the next two months.

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