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US President Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Friday to help safeguard women’s access to abortion and contraception after the Supreme Court last month overturned the Roe v Wade decision that legalised abortion, the White House said.
Biden, a Democrat, has been under pressure from supporters, particularly progressives, to take action after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in a landmark decision that upended roughly 50 years of protections for women’s reproductive rights.
Biden will direct the Health and Human Services Department to take action to protect and expand access to “medication abortion” approved by the Food and Drug Administration, the White House said.
He will also direct 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 convene pro bono attorneys and other organisations to provide legal counsel for patients seeking an abortion as well as abortion providers.
“Such representation could include protecting the right to travel out of state to seek medical care,” the White House said in a statement.
The Supreme Court’s ruling restored states’ ability to ban abortion. As a result, women with unwanted pregnancies face the choice of traveling to another state where the procedure remains legal and available, buying abortion pills online, or having a potentially dangerous illegal abortion.
Biden has condemned the court’s ruling.
The issue may help drive Democrats to the polls in the November midterm elections, when Republicans have a chance of taking control of Congress. Democrats have a slim majority in the House of Representatives and control the evenly divided Senate through Vice President Kamala Harris’s tie-breaking vote.
‘Ultimately, Congress is going to have to act’
Biden’s executive order on Friday is also aimed at protecting patients’ privacy and ensuring safety for mobile abortion clinics at state borders, and it directs the establishment of a task force to coordinate the administration’s response on reproductive health care access, the White House said.
The executive order will also direct agencies to work to educate medical providers and insurers about how and when they are required to share privileged patient information with authorities – an effort to protect women who seek or utilise abortion services. He will also ask the Federal Trade Commission to take steps to protect the privacy of those seeking information about reproductive care online and establish an interagency task force to coordinate federal efforts to safeguard access to abortion.
Since the landmark Supreme Court decision, Biden has stressed that his ability to protect abortion rights by executive action is limited without congressional action.
“Ultimately, Congress is going to have to act to codify Roe into federal law,” Biden said last week during a virtual meeting with Democratic governors.
The tasking to the Justice Department and the Health and Human Services department is expected to push the agencies to fight in court to protect women, but it conveys no guarantees that the judicial system will take their side against potential prosecution by states that have moved to outlaw abortion.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP and Reuters)
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