He also offered a message to people outraged by last month’s Supreme Court ruling that ended a constitutional right to abortion and protesting across the country: “Keep protesting. Keep speaking your mind. It is extremely important.” The president, speaking to reporters during a stop on a bike ride near his family’s beach home in Delaware, said he did not have the power to force the more than a dozen states with strict restrictions or outright bans on abortion to allow the process. READ MORE: Some US states to try to arrest women traveling for abortions, says Biden “I don’t have the authority to say we’re going to reinstate Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” he said, referring to the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a national right to abortion. Biden said Congress should codify that right, and to have more opportunities in the future, voters should elect more lawmakers who support abortion access. Trending Stories
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Story continues below ad Biden said his administration is trying to do “a lot of things to accommodate women’s rights” after the ruling, including the possibility of declaring a public health emergency to free up federal resources. Such a move has been pushed by supporters, but White House officials have questioned both its legality and effectiveness and noted that it would almost certainly face legal challenges. 2:44 Biden signs executive order to protect contraception nationwide The president said he asked officials to “consider 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 good choice.” “When we looked at the public health emergency, we learned a couple of things: One is that it doesn’t free up a lot of resources,” he told reporters. “It’s all that’s in the public health emergency fund, and there’s very little money — tens of thousands of dollars in it. So it didn’t seem like a good choice. And it also doesn’t release a significant amount of legal authority. And that’s why we haven’t taken that action yet.” © 2022 The Associated Press
