U.S. President Joe Biden, right, and U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris applaud after speaking in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, May 13, 2021. Fully vaccinated Americans can do away with wearing masks, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said today, the most significant shift in federal guidelines since the start of the pandemic. Photographer: Tasos Katopodis/UPI/Bloomberg via Getty Images
President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday to protect abortion rights following the Supreme Court’s late June decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, returning the right to individual states to determine their own abortion laws.
While there’s nothing Biden can do to restore the federal right to abortion, the executive order is aimed at bolstering reproductive health care services, including increasing access to abortion pills, directing health care services on better-ensuring patient privacy when it comes to giving authorities information and forming a group of pro bono lawyers to assist women and health care providers who are criminally charged with having or helping someone have an abortion.
In his speech before signing the executive order, he spoke of the reported story of a 10-year-old girl who was a rape victim that was forced to travel from Ohio to Indiana for the procedure.
“This isn’t some imagined horror,” Biden said. “It is already happening.”
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“We cannot allow an out-of-control Supreme Court working in conjunction with extremist elements in the Republican Party to take away freedoms and our personal autonomy,” Biden continued.
He also called on voters, especially women, to use their electoral power in the midterm elections to determine the outcome of reproductive rights in America.
“You, the women of America, you determine the outcome of this issue,” the president added.
Earlier this week, Biden voiced support for amending the Senate filibuster rule to codify abortion and privacy rights. The Senate currently requires bills to meet a 60-vote threshold which has been difficult to meet in the evenly split Senate that has been in place since Biden took office. Centrist Sens. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) have also proven to be hurdles to Biden’s agenda, as their offices reiterated their anti-filibuster rule change stances following the president’s statements this week.
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