Faced with mounting Democratic pressure, President Joe Biden said the fastest way to protect national abortion rights is by electing pro-abortion rights legislators, casting the Supreme Court’s ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade as a political fight that will be determined by the voters.
In remarks from the White House Friday, Biden recounted the story of a 10-year-old girl who was reportedly raped and forced to travel out of state to terminate her pregnancy as an example of the outcomes of returning the power to determine abortion access to the states.
“Imagine being that little girl,” Biden said, slamming the court’s decision as “terrible, extreme — and I think so totally wrong-headed.”
“What we’re witnessing wasn’t a constitutional judgment. It was an exercise in raw political power,” the president said.
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Biden has said repeatedly that he does not have the power to restore the right to abortion that Roe protected and that any meaningful change must come from Congress.
“We need two additional pro-choice senators and a pro-choice House to codify Roe as federal law,” Biden said Friday, calling this the fastest achievable way.
“You, the women of America, can determine the outcome of this issue,” he said.
Biden announced new measures Friday that promise to safeguard and extend access to women’s healthcare services, such as medication abortion and emergency contraception, and to help connect patients with private attorneys, providers, and public interest groups.
The order aims to leapfrog the legislative stalemate to codifying Roe by working through federal insurance programs.
Biden said it directs the Department of Health and Human Services “to ensure all patients, including pregnant women and girls,” can access emergency reproductive and abortion care under federal law and by providing doctors across the country guidance on their legal responsibilities and protections.
But he has acknowledged there is a limit to what he can do through executive action.
“The only way we can secure a woman’s right to choose and the balance that existed is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade as federal law,” Biden said in remarks after the court overturned Roe. “No executive action from the president can do that.”
Instead, Biden has asked the country to put abortion rights on the ballot in November to help Democrats shift the balance of power in the Senate.
While Biden predicted the rollback would spark a “mini-revolution,” he is facing the brunt of the outcry himself.
Pressure from Democrats in Congress has thrown the onus on him to take controversial actions such as establishing abortion services on federal land in states, expanding the court’s bench, or eliminating the Senate filibuster. The White House has argued that some of these strategies may not be legal.
Anti-abortion groups are attempting to counter Biden’s strategy to boost Democratic turnout by targeting voters in battleground states.
“Long gone is the Democratic Party of ‘safe, legal, and rare,’” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement Friday. She accused Biden of caving to activists campaigning for access to abortion services “on-demand, up until the moment of birth, paid for by the taxpayers.”
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Dannenfelser said her group is in battleground states working to draw attention to the Democrats’ “abortion extremism” in the lead-up to the midterm elections. It aims to spend $78 million this election cycle.
“We are committed to exposing Democrats’ abortion extremism to voters across key battleground states so this extreme agenda can be soundly rejected at the ballot box this November,” she added.
