Biden And Democratic Governors Pledge To Increase Abortion Protections

Topline

President Joe Biden met with Democratic governors in a video conference Friday to discuss efforts to protect access to abortion as more Republican-controlled states implement abortion bans in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Biden met with Democratic governors in a conference call Friday to pledge increased protections for … [+] abortions. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

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Key Facts

Biden pledged to improve federal protections for abortion pills through the Food and Drug Administration.

He also said he would have the Justice Department seek to prevent “extremist” governors from blocking women traveling across state lines to seek an abortion.

Biden called on voters to elect more Democrats to Congress in the November general election so they can codify federal protections for abortions without falling foul of a filibuster.

New York is the latest in a growing list of states, including Massachusetts and California, to enshrine abortion rights into their state constitutions, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in the video call.

Hochul and New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham also said they refuse to cooperate with states that seek extradition of doctors who perform abortions, and that they will serve as destination states for women in neighboring states where abortion is either banned or soon to be banned.

Biden called the court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization a “terrible, extreme decision, in my view, upending lives and impacting on the health and safety of millions of women.”

Key Background

Biden said in a press conference on Thursday he plans to call for an “exception” to the Senate’s filibuster on a proposed bill to codify Roe v. Wade. Six states had so-called “trigger laws” that came into effect banning abortions from the point of conception, in the week since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark 1973 decision. Bans in three other states – Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas and Utah – were temporarily blocked in state courts. Another 10 states have bans expected to be enacted in the coming weeks or months. Nationwide public support for abortion remains high. A Gallup poll released in May found 80% of Americans support abortions in all or most cases, and a Pew Research Center poll found 59% believe abortion should be legal.

Crucial Quote

Hochul called the bans “a matter of life and death for women because we do not want to go back to the days anywhere in this country of the back-alley abortions.”

Tangent

Biden expressed concern that the reasoning in the court’s decision has an “impact beyond Roe” to the right to privacy more generally – a reference to Justice Clarence Thomas’s opinion the court should revisit the federal legal precedents set in cases involving same-sex marriage and contraception.

Big Number

10,000. That’s the number of out-of-state women Gov. Roy Cooper (D-N.C.) expects to flock to North Carolina over the next year for an abortion through Planned Parenthood. North Carolina law protects access to abortion clinics for people from other states, including neighboring Georgia, South Carolina and Tennessee, which have bans expected to be passed.