Biden considering declaring public health emergency on abortion

President Joe Biden said his team is looking into the possibility of declaring a public health emergency in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. The President said there are multiple actions he’d like to take to ensure access to abortion, but he doesn’t know if he can legally do it unilaterally. 

“That’s something I’ve asked the folks, the medical people in the administration to look at whether that, whether I have the authority to do that and what impact that would have,” President Biden said. 

The President made the comments after demonstrators in Washington, D.C. called on him to take executive action to expand access to medication abortion, emergency medical care, family planning and contraception.

“Keep protesting because keep making your point,” President Biden said. “But fundamentally, the only way to change this is if we have a national law that reinstates Roe v. Wade. That’s the bottom line.”

The protestors sat outside the White House gates holding signs that read “bans off our bodies”.

There is support among Democrats to make an exception to the Senate filibuster in order to pass a law codifying abortion rights. But it does not appear there is sufficient support to change Senate rules in order to do that.

The President signed an executive order Friday ordering the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to “protect and expand” access to abortion care through FDA-approved medication.

The debate in the wake of the Dobbs decision sending the issue of abortion back to the states has brought forward a wave of both pro-choice and pro-life measures across the country. For instance, this November, Michigan voters will decide on whether or not to enshrine abortion rights in their state consitution. A State District Judge in Louisiana declined to extend a restraining order on the state’s new law that almost entirely bans abortion with exceptions to the save the life or prevent serious injury to the mother.