Today, the House Republicans unanimously nixed further consideration of the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA). Too often, the WHPA has been described only in shorthand, depicted as an attempt to codify the now overruled Roe v. Wade. The WHPA, however, made a much bolder statement about women’s equality in the U.S. than Roe ever did. In its statement of purposes, the WHPA explicitly connects access to abortion services to “women’s ability to participate equally in the economic and social life of the United States.” This is as close as any branch of the U.S. federal government has ever come to explicitly stating that without the ability to control their reproductive lives, women in America cannot escape systemic subordination to the interests of men. Today, the House Republicans made it pretty sure that the 118th Congress will not actually make such a statement.