A furious Joe Biden denounced a “tragic error” fueled by “extreme ideology,” urging Americans to set things right at the polls. But words aside — the US president is all-but-powerless to defend the right to abortion.
The 79-year-old Democrat, a staunch Catholic turned abortion rights advocate, kept his remarks brief in addressing the thunderbolt ruling handed down Friday by the Supreme Court.
But in the televised address from the White House, he pulled no punches.
The conservative-dominated court, by overturning “Roe v. Wade,” is “literally taking America back 150 years,” Biden charged.
“The court has done what it has never done before — expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans,” said Biden — warning that other rights could now be at risk, from contraception to same-sex marriage.
That is the “extreme and dangerous path the court has now taken us on,” he said.
Biden vowed to do everything he could to shield abortion access.
But with the Supreme Court stripping away a half-century-old federal right, handing power to often anti-abortion state legislatures, he acknowledged that his hands are largely tied.
The only way to ensure the right now “is for Congress to restore the protections of ‘Roe v. Wade’ as federal law,” he said. “No executive action from the president can do that.”
“Voters need to make their voices heard,” he said.
Struggling in the polls as inflation surges — and fears mount of a recession — Biden signaled the intention to make abortion a key part of the Democratic campaign to retain control of Congress in November midterm elections.
“This Fall, ‘Roe’ is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot — the right to privacy, liberty, equality, are all on the ballot.”
Biden vowed to do “all in my power” to curb the impact of the court’s ruling — citing for instance women’s right to travel out of state to receive reproductive care, and access to abortion pills.
But he did not touch on calls from part of the left for abortion clinics to be built on federal land in conservative states — or for reform of the Supreme Court.
– No questions –
About half of the US states are moving immediately to either ban or severely restrict abortion, responding to decades of activism by the so-called “pro-life” movement, which finally got its chance when Republican president Donald Trump named three more conservative justices to the top court, tilting the balance firmly right.
Biden did not hide his anger as he described some of the laws emerging from states as “jeopardizing the health of millions of women.”
In some cases, legislators are allowing women to be “punished for protecting their health” and forcing women to “bear their rapist’s child,” he said.
After concluding, Biden turned and left without taking questions from reporters, while the White House daily briefing was canceled — to protests from the press corps.
The next time Biden faces the media will be Saturday morning when he leaves on a days-long trip to Europe.
During back-to-back G7 and NATO summits, the “leader of the free world” will rub shoulders with Western leaders, several of whom have openly denounced the US Supreme Court ruling.
As it happens, his first stop will be Germany, which has just consigned to history a Nazi-era law that limits the information doctors and clinics can provide about abortion.
And by Biden’s own admission, the Supreme Court’s ruling has made the United States an “outlier” among developed nations.
