By Dominic Taylor-
Joe Biden has signed an executive order on Friday ,aimed at protecting abortion rights in response to the landmark decision by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
The U.S President, who has always lamented new laws that restrict abortions, said the order will safeguard access to abortion care and contraceptives, protect patient privacy, and establish an interagency task force to use “every federal tool available to protect access to reproductive health care.”
He said it will also increase public education efforts and bolster the security of and the legal options available to those seeking and providing abortion services, according to a fact sheet provided by the White House.
Biden highlighted a hypothetical scenario which he feels highlights the stakes.
“A patient comes into an emergency room in any state in the union, she is … experiencing a life-threatening miscarriage, but the doctor is going to be so concerned about being criminalized for treating her they delay treatment to call the hospital lawyer, who’s concerned the hospital will be penalized if the doctor provides the life-saving care,” Biden said, speaking from the White House.
“It’s outrageous. I don’t care what your position is, it’s outrageous and it’s dangerous,” Biden said. He was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
Jen Klein, the co-chair and executive director of the White House Gender Policy Council, said on Friday that the White House is “looking at everything” to ensure access to abortion and that declaring a public health emergency “is definitely not off the table.”
Klein said the step had not been taken because the White House had determined that declaring a public health emergency “doesn’t free very many resources” and “doesn’t release a significant amount of legal authority.”
Friday’s executive order will prompt Becerra to take steps to ensure access to abortion.”
What we’re witnessing wasn’t a constitutional judgment, it was an exercise in raw political power,” Biden told reporters at the White House. “We cannot allow an out of control Supreme Court, working in conjunction with extremist elements of the Republican party, to take away freedoms and our personal autonomy.”
America is now battling what many right thinking individuals see as the law gone mad, after the Supreme Court gave individual states the right to ban abortion outrightly and make no allowances for extreme circumstances like rape or incest.
The Supreme Court’s decision this week, concluding that agency efforts to curb emissions from power plants is a “major question” that Congress did not give EPA the authority to handle has added more to the discontent about the highest court’s judgement.
The court seems to be ignoring common sense and exploring the limits of the abuse of its powers in ways that require serious confrontation in intellectual discussion and debate.