WASHINGTON, July 8 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Friday to help protect women’s access to abortion and contraception after the Supreme Court last month overturned the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion, the White House announced.
Biden, a Democrat, has been under pressure from supporters, particularly progressives, to act after the landmark decision upended roughly 50 years of protections for women’s reproductive rights.
Biden will direct the Department of Health and Human Services to take action to protect and expand access to “medical abortion” approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the White House said.
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He will also lead the department to ensure women have access to emergency medical care, family planning services and contraception, including intrauterine devices (IUDs).
Biden’s attorney general and White House counsel will bring together pro bono attorneys and other organizations to provide legal advice to abortion-seeking patients as well as abortion providers.
“Such representation may include protecting the right to travel out of state to seek medical care,” the White House said in a statement.
The Supreme Court ruling restored the ability of states to ban abortions. As a result, women with unwanted pregnancies are faced with the choice of traveling to another country where the procedure remains legal and affordable, buying abortion pills online, or having a potentially dangerous illegal abortion.
Biden condemned the court’s decision.
The issue could help Democrats get to the polls in November’s midterm elections, when Republicans have a chance to take control of Congress. Democrats hold a slim majority in the House of Representatives and control the evenly divided Senate through Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.
Biden’s executive order on Friday also aims to protect patient privacy and ensure the safety of mobile abortion clinics at state lines, and orders the creation of a task force to coordinate the administration’s response on access to reproductive health care, the White House said.
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Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Edwina Gibbs
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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