Biden signs order on access to abortion and urges women to vote in November – National | Globalnews.ca

President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday to protect abortion access as he faced mounting pressure from fellow Democrats to be more forceful on the issue after the Supreme Court struck down the constitutional right to the procedure two weeks ago.

The actions he outlined are intended to mitigate some potential penalties that women seeking an abortion may face after the ruling, but have limited ability to safeguard access to abortion across the country. Biden acknowledged the limitations her office faces, saying she would require an act of Congress to restore access to abortion in more than a dozen states where strict limits or outright bans have gone into effect in the wake of the ruling. Supreme Court. About a dozen more states are poised to impose additional restrictions in the coming weeks and months.

“The fastest way to restore Roe is to pass national law,” Biden said. ““The challenge is to go out and vote. For God’s sake, there are elections in November. Vote. Vote. Vote. Vote!”

Biden formally directed the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to reject efforts to limit women’s ability to access federally approved abortion medications or travel across state lines to access abortion services. clinical abortion. He was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Assistant Attorney General Lisa Monaco in the Roosevelt Room as she signed the order.

His executive order also directs agencies to work to educate medical providers and insurers on how and when to share privileged patient information with authorities, an effort to protect women who seek or use abortion services. It is also asking the Federal Trade Commission to take steps to protect the privacy of those seeking reproductive care information online and establish an interagency task force to coordinate federal efforts to safeguard access to abortion.

Biden is also directing his staff to call on volunteer attorneys to provide women and providers with pro bono legal assistance to help them navigate new state restrictions after the Supreme Court ruling.

The order, following the June 24 high court ruling that ended abortion rights across the country and left it to states to determine whether or how to allow the procedure, comes as Biden has faced criticism from some on his own. party for not acting more urgently. to protect women’s access to abortion. The decision in the case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade.

Since the decision, Biden has emphasized that his ability to protect abortion rights through executive action is limited without congressional action, emphasizing that Democrats do not have the votes in the current Congress to do so.

“We need two additional pro-choice senators and a pro-choice chamber to codify Roe,” he said. “Your vote can make that a reality.”

He predicted that women would turn out in “record numbers” frustrated by the court’s decision, saying he hoped “millions and millions of men will take up the fight alongside them.”

On Friday, he repeated his harsh criticism of the Supreme Court’s reasoning in striking down what had been a constitutional right to abortion for half a century.

READ MORE: Biden administration suspends rules to limit arrest and deportation of immigrants

“Let’s be clear about something up front, this was not a decision driven by the Constitution,” Biden said, accusing the court majority of “playing fast and loose with the facts.”

“Ultimately, Congress will have to act to codify Roe into federal law,” Biden said last week during a virtual meeting with Democratic governors.

The assignment to the Department of Justice and HHS pushes agencies to fight in court to protect women, but it does not guarantee that the judicial system will side with them against potential prosecution by states that have moved to ban abortion.

“President Biden has made it clear that the only way to guarantee a woman’s right to choose is for Congress to reinstate Roe’s protections as federal law,” the White House said. “Until then, he is committed to doing everything in his power to uphold reproductive rights and protect access to safe and legal abortion.”

NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju called Biden’s order “an important first step in restoring rights that the Supreme Court took away from millions of Americans.”

But Lawrence Gostin, who heads the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health at Georgetown Law, described Biden’s plans as “disappointing.”

“There is nothing that I saw that would affect the lives of ordinary poor women living in red states,” she said.

Gostin encouraged Biden to take a more forceful approach to ensuring access to medical abortion nationwide, saying Medicaid should consider covering transportation to other states for the purpose of performing abortions.

Gostin said: “We basically have two Americas.” There is one in which people have access to a full range of health care and “another in which citizens do not have the same rights to safe and effective treatment as the rest of the country.”

Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the AP that the agency was looking at how Medicaid could cover abortion trips, along with a variety of other proposals, but acknowledged that “abortion coverage Medicaid is extremely limited.”

READ MORE: Canada’s abortion pill maker ramps up supply, says access is safe as Roe falls

Biden’s move was the latest fight to protect the data privacy of those contemplating or seeking abortion, as regulators and lawmakers consider the fallout from the Supreme Court ruling.

The court’s decision is expected to make abortion illegal in more than a dozen states and severely restricted in others. Privacy experts say that could make women vulnerable because their personal data could be used to monitor pregnancy and shared with police or sold to vigilantes. Online searches, location data, text messages and emails, and even period-tracking apps could be used to prosecute people who seek an abortion, or medical care for a miscarriage, as well as those who help them, experts say.

Privacy advocates are keeping an eye out for potential new moves by law enforcement agencies in affected states, serving subpoenas, for example, on tech companies like Google, Apple, Bing, Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp, services like Uber. and Lyft, and internet service providers, including AT&T. , Verizon, T-Mobile and Comcast. Local prosecutors can go to sympathetic judges to obtain search warrants for user data.

Last month, four Democratic lawmakers asked the FTC to investigate Apple and Google for allegedly misleading millions of mobile phone users by allowing the collection and sale of their personal data to third parties.