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US president Joe Biden has confirmed he has asked his team to explore the possibility of declaring a public health emergency to safeguard abortion rights after the US supreme court overturned the Roe v Wade decision.
“I’ve asked the folks on the medical people in the administration to look at whether I have the authority to do that and what impact it would have,” said Mr Biden on Sunday. He also urged abortion-rights supporters to keep protesting.
Top officials at the health and human services department and the White House discussed the emergency option before a June 28th news conference by health and human services secretary Xavier Becerra, but set aside the idea due to concern that the impact would not justify the inevitable legal battle, according to people familiar with the matter.
Jennifer Klein, director of the White House gender policy council, said on Friday that an emergency declaration is “not off the table, but questioned whether it would help. The government’s public health emergency fund has only “tens of thousands of dollars and the measure wouldn’t release a significant amount of legal authority”, she said.
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After almost 50 years
Biden has been on the defensive over what activists and some Democrats consider a tepid White House response to last month’s ruling, in which the court’s conservative majority threw out the constitutional right to an abortion after almost 50 years.
In a sign of the tensions, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield was quoted in the Washington Post as defending Biden’s response and saying his goal is not to “satisfy some activists who have been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party”.
Hundreds of abortion-rights supporters rallied near the White House on Saturday in the latest protest against the ruling. Mr Biden, who was spending the weekend at his beach house in Delaware, said his message to them was: “Yes, keep protesting, keep making your point. It’s critically important.”
The president reiterated his “bottom line goal is to codify abortion rights in US law”. That would require Republican support in Congress which isn’t forthcoming.
He added: “Keep protesting. Keep making your point. It’s critically important. We can do a lot of things to accommodate the rights of women. In the meantime, fundamentally, the only way to change this is to have a national law that reinstates Roe v Wade.”
He said he could do some things to help women access abortion, such as the ability to cross state lines and protecting private information, but ultimately a law was necessary. “As president, I don’t have the authority to say that we’re going to reinstate Roe v Wade as the law of the land. My ultimate goal is to reinstate Roe v Wade as a national law by passing a law through the United States Congress and I’ll sign it.”
Meanwhile, vice-president Kamala Harris renewed pleas to voters ahead of the midterm congressional races to elect pro-choice candidates.
Harris interview
In an interview with CBS News on Sunday, Harris urged voters to elect a “pro-choice Congress” in November and highlighted that down-ballot contests at the local level would also be central to restoring abortion rights in certain parts of the country.
“You don’t have to advocate or believe that this is right for you or your family, but don’t let the government make the decision for her family, whoever she may be,” said Ms Harris said in a pre-recorded interview. “It means state offices, governors, secretaries of state, attorneys general. It means local races, who’s going to be your DA [district attorney], who’s going to be your sheriff, enforcing laws that are being passed to criminalise medical health providers, and maybe even the women who seek the service.”
Ms Harris sought to quell calls for Mr Biden to serve just one term as president before allowing a new Democratic nominee to contest the 2024 election. “Listen to President Biden,” she said. “He intends to run. And if he does, I intend to run with him.” — Bloomberg, Reuters