WASHINGTON – Under pressure to do more in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade case, President Biden will issue an executive order on Friday to ensure access to the measures. contraception and other women’s health services, White House officials said.
Details of what the new presidential order will do remain unclear. A fact sheet released by the White House said the order would direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services to take a series of steps and report back within 30 days.
Those steps include taking action to protect and expand access to abortion care, ensuring access to urgent medical care, increasing community outreach and public education and help organize private attorneys to represent patients.
The order will seek to protect patient privacy regarding sensitive data and strengthen efforts to protect the physical safety of patients in health clinics, according to the fact sheet, and it will establish an interdisciplinary task force.
Mr. Biden has repeatedly said he has no authority to restore the constitutional abortion right the court ended up overturning Roe. Within hours of the ruling, the president said he was powerless to restore the status quo.
“The only way we can ensure women’s right to choose and the balance that exists is for Congress to restore Roe v. Wade protections as federal law,” Biden said. “No executive action from the president can do that.”
But that effort to shift responsibility to Congress was unsuccessful among some of Biden’s core supporters, who have repeatedly called for the White House to push harder to find new ways around the decision. Court decisions and subsequent restrictions on abortion are led by Republican-led state legislatures.
For example, some activists and legislators have urged the president to establish abortion services on federal land or on Native American territories, where state law prohibits abortion services from being available. invalid. The White House has dismissed those comments as legally unfeasible and potentially even more dangerous for women who want an abortion.
On Thursday, a reporter asked Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, if the president was looking into the possibility that the Department of Veterans Affairs could offer abortions at VA hospitals.
“As you know, current regulations do not allow the VA to provide abortion services,” said Jean-Pierre. “We will continue to review. We will continue to explore every possible option to protect women’s rights and access to reproductive health.”
When asked about a possible executive order related to abortion, Jean-Pierre declined to answer the question, saying she would not “get ahead of the president.”
Mr. Biden is expected to sign the executive order on Friday before leaving for the weekend at his beach house in Delaware. The fact sheet does not include any more sweeping proposals for using federal resources to provide abortion services.
