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It was a new era in Washington in 1981, and abortion rights activists were terrified. With an anti-abortion president, Ronald Reagan, in power and Republicans controlling the Senate for the first time in decades, social conservatives pushed for a constitutional amendment to allow individual states to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling that had made abortion legal nationwide several years earlier. The amendment — which the National Abortion Rights Action League called “the most devastating attack yet on abortion rights” — cleared a key hurdle in the Senate Judiciary Committee in March 1982. Support came not only from Republicans but from a 39-year-old, second-term Democrat: Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Lerer, 3/29)

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi introduced legislation this week to strengthen the Affordable Care Act, Democrats across the ideological spectrum were quick to express their support: moderates, liberals, even Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the often uncompromising progressive freshman. But not Bernie Sanders. When asked on Tuesday night whether he, too, supported the House bill, Mr. Sanders was defiant. “No,” he said tersely. “No,” he said again, when pressed. “The incremental reform that I support is phasing in ‘Medicare for all.’” (Ember, 3/29)