Biden mulls health emergency on abortions, calls US Supreme Court ‘out of control’
President urges people to ‘keep protesting’ overturning of Roe v. Wade; White House official Jen Klein has said declaring health emergency isn’t a ‘great option’
US President Joe Biden said Sunday that he is considering declaring a public health emergency to free up federal resources to promote abortion access even though the White House has said it does not seem like “a great option.”
He also called the US Supreme Court “out of control,” and offered a message to people enraged by the court’s ruling last month that ended a constitutional right to abortion and who have been demonstrating across the country: “Keep protesting. Keep making your point. It’s critically important.”
The president, in remarks to reporters during a stop on a bike ride near his family’s Delaware beach house, said he lacks the power to force the dozen-plus states with strict restrictions or outright bans on abortion to allow the procedure.
“I don’t have the authority to say that we’re going to reinstate Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court’s decision from 1973 that had established a national right to abortion. Biden said Congress would have to codify that right and for that to have a better chance in the future, voters would have to elect more lawmakers who support abortion access.
“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,” he said.
Biden said his administration has been making a point to try to do a “lot of things to accommodate the rights of women” after the ruling, including considering declaring a public health emergency to free up federal resources. Such a move has been pushed by advocates, but White House officials have questioned both its legality and efficacy, and noted that it would almost certainly face legal challenges.
The president said he has asked officials “to look at whether I have the authority to do that and what impact that would have.”
On Friday, Jen Klein, the director of the White House Gender Policy Council, said it “didn’t seem like a great option.”
“When we looked at the public health emergency, we learned a couple things: One is that it doesn’t free very many resources,” she told reporters. “It’s what’s in the public health emergency fund, and there’s very little money — tens of thousands of dollars in it. So that didn’t seem like a great option. And it also doesn’t release a significant amount of legal authority. And so that’s why we haven’t taken that action yet.”
