President Joe Biden Friday announced a new executive order to protect abortion access. However, the order is not expected to force states that have banned abortions to provide them.
“The Administration will ensure the safety of patients, providers, and third parties, and to protect the security of other entities that are providing, dispensing, or delivering reproductive health care services,” said a fact sheet about the order. “This charge includes efforts to protect mobile clinics, which have been deployed to borders to offer care for out-of-state patients.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court effectively overturned 50 years of abortion protections established by Roe v. Wade last month with its Dobbs v.
Jackson Women’s Health opinion, nine states have put near total bans on abortion in place, according to Politico. Other states also have strict laws limiting abortion access, per data from the Guttmacher Institute.
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“Eliminating the right recognized in Roe has already had and will continue to have devastating implications for women’s health and public health more broadly,” said Biden’s order. “Access to reproductive healthcare services is now threatened for millions of Americans, and especially for those who live in States that are banning or severely restricting abortion care.”
Some critics of the Supreme Court’s decision have pointed to the 2012 death of a pregnant woman whose baby had no chance to survive as what might happen in the U.S. Due to strict abortion laws in her county, the woman was not offered a potentially life-saving abortion, according to NBC News.
Additionally, the Biden administration said the court’s ruling “ruling will disproportionately affect women of color, low-income women, and rural women,” who may have to travel long distances to access reproductive health care that they need. For example, Guttmacher data indicates that women in Texas have to drive an average of 250 miles to get an abortion up to 20 weeks.
So far, the Biden administration has provided $3 million in new funding for reproductive health care providers.
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Biden’s order instructs the Attorney General and the White House Counsel to “convene private pro bono attorneys, bar associations, and public interest organizations to encourage robust legal representation of patients, providers, and third parties lawfully seeking or offering reproductive health care services throughout the country,” including protection of the right to travel out-of-state to get medical care.
He also called on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to look into more ways to protect abortion access and deliver a report within 30 days. Other parts of the administration, including the Federal Trade Commission, were also called upon to help the effort.
While there is some limited support for abortion access in the order, Biden “has made clear that the only way to secure a woman’s right to choose is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe as federal law,” which lawmakers failed to accomplish shortly after a draft of the Dobbs opinion leaked in May. “Until then, he has committed to doing everything in his power to defend reproductive rights and protect access to safe and legal abortion.”
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