In reaction to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the case that legalised abortion in 1973, President Joe Biden will issue an executive order on Friday to protect access to abortions.
“President Biden has made clear that the only way to secure a woman’s right to choose is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe as federal law,” a July 8 White House fact sheet reads. “Until then, he has committed to doing everything in his power to defend reproductive rights and protect access to safe and legal abortion.”
To accomplish this, he will sign an “Executive Order Protecting Access to Reproductive Health Care Services.”
The order will focus on four general areas: access to “reproductive health care services,” including abortion and contraception; patients’ privacy and access to information; the security of patients, providers, and clinics; and the coordination of federal efforts to protect “reproductive rights and access to health care.”
National pro-life advocates voiced alarm about the directive, particularly with regard to how it will affect abortion-related medications.
“It is tragic that this administration is using its power to push for more and more painful abortions which harm women and take innocent lives,” March for Life President Jeanne Mancini said in a statement. “Of particular concern is the administration’s effort to push chemical abortion which carries significant health risks to women, even more than surgical abortion.”
Likewise, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Marjorie Dannenefelser, stressed that “President Biden has once again caved to the extreme abortion lobby, determined to put the full weight of the federal government behind promoting abortion.”
“Democrats will stop at nothing to promote their agenda of abortion on demand, up until the moment of birth, paid for by the taxpayers – including dangerous mail-order abortion drugs — even if it means gutting the long-standing filibuster, increasing the size of the Supreme Court, or putting abortionists in tents in national parks,” she said in a statement.
Under safeguarding “access to reproductive health,” Biden directed the Secretary of Health and Human Services to protect “medication” abortion and contraception, ensure emergency medical care particularly for pregnant woman, launch public education efforts, and convene public lawyers.
“Such representation could include protecting the right to travel out of state to seek medical care,” the fact sheet reads.
The directive pledges to protect customers from privacy violations and dishonest business activities, as well as to safeguard sensitive medical data, under the heading of preserving patient privacy.
According to the fact sheet, the administration will also defend both abortion doctors and clinics, including “mobile clinics, which have been deployed to borders to offer care for out-of-state patients.”
The order would create a “Interagency Task Force on Reproductive Health Care Access” to manage federal interagency policymaking and programme creation as part of coordinating government efforts.
Contrary to the Catholic Church’s teaching that human life must be valued and safeguarded from the time of conception, Biden, a practising Catholic, has frequently supported abortion.