The actions Biden outlined are intended to mitigate some potential penalties women seeking abortions may face after the ruling, but his order cannot restore access to abortion in more than a dozen states where strict limits or total bans. About a dozen more states are set to impose additional restrictions. Biden acknowledged the limitations his office faces, saying it would require an act of Congress to restore nationwide access to what it was before the June 24 decision. “The fastest way to restore Roe is to pass a national law,” Biden said. “The challenge is to get out and vote. For God’s sake there are elections in November! Biden’s action formalized directives to the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to reverse efforts to limit women’s ability to access federally approved abortion drugs or travel across state lines to access clinical abortion services . He was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in the Roosevelt Room as he signed the order. His executive order also directs the agencies to work to educate medical providers and insurers about how and when they are required to share privileged patient information with authorities — an effort to protect women who seek or use abortion services. It also calls on the Federal Trade Commission to take steps to protect the privacy of those seeking reproductive care information online and to create an interagency task force to coordinate federal efforts to ensure access to abortion. Biden is also directing his staff to call on volunteer attorneys to provide women and pro bono providers with legal assistance to help them meet the new state restrictions following the Supreme Court ruling. The decision, following a June 24 Supreme Court ruling that ended nationwide abortion rights and left states to determine whether or how to allow the procedure, comes as Biden has faced criticism from some in his 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. After the decision, Biden stressed that his ability to protect abortion rights through executive action is limited without congressional action, and stressed that Democrats do not have the votes in the current Congress to do so. “We need two more pro-choice senators and a pro-choice House to codify Roe,” he said. “Your vote can make it happen.” Biden first announced last week his support for changing Senate rules to allow a measure to restore nationwide access to abortion to pass with a simple majority, rather than the usual 60-vote threshold required for the termination of an abortion. However, at least two Democratic lawmakers have made it clear they will not support changing the Senate rules. He predicted women would join in “record numbers” dismayed by the court’s decision and said he expected “millions and millions of men to take up the fight alongside them”. On Friday, he repeated his sharp criticism of the Supreme Court’s reasoning for striking down a half-century-old constitutional right to abortion. “Let’s be clear from the start, this was not a decision driven by the Constitution,” Biden said, accusing the court’s majority of “playing fast and loose with the facts.” He spoke with emotion about a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was forced to travel out of state to end a pregnancy after rape, noting that some states have enacted abortion bans that have no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. “A 10-year-old child should be forced to give birth to a rapist’s child!” Biden almost shouted. “I can’t think of anything more extreme.” Biden added ahead of November’s midterm elections that “the choice we face as a nation is between mainstream or extreme.” The mandate to the Justice Department and HHS prompts the agencies to fight in court to protect women, but provides no guarantee that the court system will side with them against potential prosecution by states that have moved to ban abortions. “President Biden has made it clear that the only way to ensure a woman’s right to choose is for Congress to restore Roe’s protections as federal law,” the White House said. “Until then, he is committed to doing everything in his power to defend 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 the rights taken from millions of Americans by the Supreme Court.” But Lawrence Gostin, who directs the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health at Georgetown Law, described Biden’s plans as “mandatory.” “I didn’t see anything that affected the lives of ordinary poor women living in red states,” she said. Gostin encouraged Biden to take a more proactive approach to ensuring access to medication abortion across the country and said Medicaid should consider covering transportation to other states for abortion purposes. Gostin said, “We basically have two Americas.” There is one where people have access to a full range of health care and “another where citizens do not have the same rights to safe and effective treatments as the rest of the country.” Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the AP that the agency is considering how Medicaid could cover abortion travel, along with a number of other proposals, but acknowledged that “Medicaid coverage on abortion is extremely limited.” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America President Marjorie Dannenfelser condemned Biden’s order, saying, “President Biden has once again caved in to the extreme abortion lobby, determined to put the full weight of the federal government behind the promotion of abortions”. Biden’s move was the latest battle to protect the privacy of the data of those considering or seeking abortions, as regulators and lawmakers reckon with the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision. The court’s decision is expected to make abortion illegal in more than a dozen states and severely restricted in others. Privacy experts say this could leave women vulnerable because their personal data could be used to track pregnancies and shared with police or sold to vigilantes. Internet searches, location data, text messages and emails, and even period-tracking apps could be used to prosecute people seeking abortions — or medical treatment for abortion — as well as those who help them, experts say. Privacy advocates are watching for possible new moves by law enforcement agencies in the affected states — serving subpoenas, for example, to tech companies like Google, Apple, Bing, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, services like Uber and Lyft and internet service providers including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Comcast. Local prosecutors may go before sympathetic judges to obtain search warrants for user data. Last month four Democratic lawmakers asked the FTC to investigate Apple and Google for allegedly defrauding millions of cellphone users by allowing their personal data to be collected and sold to third parties.
AP writers Marcy Gordon and Hillary Powell contributed to this report.
For AP’s full coverage of the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, go to
