WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday condemned the “extreme” Supreme Court majority that ended the constitutional right to abortion and issued an impassioned appeal to Americans upset by the decision to “vote, vote, vote” in November. Under mounting pressure from his fellow Democrats to be stronger in response to the decision, he signed an executive order to try to protect access to the procedure.
The actions Biden outlined are intended to prevent some potential penalties women seeking abortions could face after the ruling, but his order cannot restore access to abortion in more than a dozen states where strict restrictions have gone into effect or complete bans. About a dozen more states are poised to impose additional restrictions.
Biden acknowledged the limitations his office faces, saying it would take an act of Congress to restore national access to the way it was before the June 24 decision.
“The fastest way to restore Roe is to pass a national law,” Biden said. “The challenge is to get out and vote. For God’s sake, there’s an election in November!’
Biden’s action formalized instructions to the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to push back on efforts to limit women’s ability to access federally approved abortion drugs or travel across state lines to access clinical abortion services. He was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in the Roosevelt Room as he signed the order.
His executive order also directs agencies to work to educate medical providers and insurers about how and when they are required to share privileged patient information with authorities — an attempt to protect women who seek or receive abortion services. It also asks the Federal Trade Commission to take steps to protect the privacy of those seeking reproductive care information online and to create a task force to coordinate federal efforts to protect abortion access.
Biden is also ordering his staff to recruit volunteer attorneys to provide women and providers with free legal aid to help them deal with the new state restrictions.
The order comes as Biden faces criticism from some in his own party for not acting more urgently to protect women’s access to abortion. The court’s decision in the case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, overturned the landmark 1973 decision Roe v. Wade.
After the decision, Biden stressed that his ability to protect abortion rights through executive action is limited without congressional action and emphasized that Democrats do not have the votes in the current Congress to do so.
“We need two additional pro-choice senators and a pro-choice House to codify Roe,” he said. “Your vote can make this a reality.”
Last week, Biden first announced his support for changing Senate rules to allow a measure to restore national access to abortion to pass with a simple majority instead of the usual 60-vote threshold needed to end a filibuster. At least two Democratic lawmakers, however, have made it clear they will not support changing the Senate rules.
He predicted women would turn out in “record numbers” in frustration at the court’s decision and said he expected “millions and millions of men to fight alongside them”.
On Friday, he repeated his sharp criticism of the Supreme Court’s reasoning for overturning what had been a half-century-old constitutional right to abortion.
“Let’s be clear from the start, this was not a decision driven by the constitution,” Biden said. He accused the majority of the court of “playing fast and loose with the facts.”
He spoke emotionally about a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was reportedly forced to travel out of state to terminate a pregnancy after being raped, noting that some states have enacted abortion bans that have no exceptions for cases of rape or incest.
“A 10-year-old should be forced to give birth to a rapist’s child!” an incredulous Biden almost shouted. “I can’t think of anything more extreme.”
Biden added that in November’s congressional elections, “the choice we face as a nation is between the mainstream or the extreme.”
His directive to the Justice Department and HHS forces the agencies to fight in court to protect women, but the order offers no guarantees that the court system will side with them against potential prosecution by states that have banned abortions.
NARAL Pro-Choice America President Minnie Thimaraju called Biden’s order “an important first step in restoring the rights stripped by the Supreme Court to millions of Americans.”
But Lawrence Gostin, who directs the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health at Georgetown Law, described Biden’s plans as “astounding.”
“There’s nothing I’ve seen that affects the lives of ordinary poor women living in red states,” he said.
Gostin encouraged Biden to take a stronger approach to providing access to medical abortion across the country and said Medicaid should consider covering transportation to other states for abortion purposes.
Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the AP that the agency is looking at how Medicaid could cover travel for abortions, along with a number of other proposals, but acknowledged that “Medicaid coverage for abortions is extremely limited .”
Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser condemned Biden’s order, saying, “President Biden has once again caved in to the extreme abortion lobby, determined to put the full weight of the federal government behind the promotion of abortion.”
Biden’s move was the latest battle to protect the privacy of those considering or seeking an abortion, as regulators and lawmakers grapple with the fallout from the Supreme Court ruling.
Privacy experts say women could be vulnerable if their personal data is used to monitor pregnancies and shared with police or sold to vigilantes. Online searches, location data, text messages and emails, and even period-tracking apps can be used to track down people seeking abortions — or medical care for miscarriages — as well as those who help them, experts say.
Privacy advocates are watching for possible new moves by law enforcement in the affected states — serving subpoenas, for example, on tech companies like Google, Apple, Bing, Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp, services like Uber and Lyft, and Internet service providers. including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Comcast. Local prosecutors can go before sympathetic judges to obtain search warrants for user data.
Last month, four Democratic lawmakers asked the FTC to investigate Apple and Google for allegedly defrauding millions of cellphone users by allowing their personal data to be collected and sold to third parties.
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AP writers Aamer Madani, Marcy Gordon and Hilary Powell contributed to this report.
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For complete AP coverage of the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, go to
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