WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — President Joe Biden commemorated the 51st anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling Monday with a statement lamenting that the precedent is no longer in effect, claiming that empowering states to protect preborn babies means “women’s health and lives are at risk.”
“Fifty-one years ago today, the Supreme Court recognized a woman’s constitutional right to make deeply personal decisions with her doctor — free from the interference of politicians,” the White House statement begins. “Then, a year and a half ago, the Court made the extreme decision to overturn Roe and take away a constitutional right.”
On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 to overturn Roe in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, allowing states to directly decide their own abortion laws for the first time in half a century. The majority determined that abortion was never a constitutional right, a conclusion that even many pro-choice legal scholars have admitted in the past.
“As a result, tens of millions of women now live in states with extreme and dangerous abortion bans,” the statement continued. “Because of Republican elected officials, women’s health and lives are at risk. In states across the country, women are being turned away from emergency rooms, forced to go to court to seek permission for the medical attention they need, and made to travel hundreds of miles for health care.”
Contrary to pervasive talking points from the abortion lobby and its political allies, doctors affirm that directly, intentionally aborting a baby is never medically necessary to save a mother in genuine medical emergencies, every state in which abortion is currently banned explicitly makes exceptions to save mothers’ lives, and the vast majority of abortions have never been sought for medical reasons.
Nevertheless, the statement concludes with a declaration that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are “fighting to protect women’s reproductive freedom against Republicans officials’ dangerous, extreme, and out-of-touch agenda. We stand with the vast majority of Americans who support a woman’s right to choose, and continue to call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe in federal law once and for all.”
Democrats have opted to make abortion one of their main talking points for driving left-wing turnout to reelect Biden this November. The Biden-Harris campaign recently released an ad in which Texas OB-GYN Dr. Austin Dennard lectures on the supposed “need” for abortion, citing her own experience aborting a baby diagnosed with anencephaly.
Biden has called for Congress to send to his desk a federal law that would “codify Roe v. Wade to protect every woman’s constitutional right to choose” abortion, such as the Women’s Health Protection Act or Freedom of Choice Act, either of which would not only prohibit state-level abortion bans but make it impossible for states to enact any meaningful limits or regulations on abortion.
Biden has further boasted that his administration has “launched a whole-of-government effort to protect reproductive rights” (a popular euphemism for legal abortion on demand), including increased taxpayer funding for abortion at home and abroad and attempted waiving of federal safety rules against distributing abortion pills by mail.
In past pro-abortion comments, Harris has called it “immoral” to protect babies conceived in rape, omitted the word “life” from her invocation of the Declaration of Independence, and refused to identify any acceptable cutoff point for legal abortion.
Most recently, Biden met with his White House Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access to discuss “new actions” on Roe’s anniversary. Harris simultaneously announced the launch of a “Fight for Reproductive Freedoms” tour to highlight the left-wing administration’s pushback against pro-life legislation and new efforts to ensure that women can continue getting abortions in the U.S.
In a fact sheet marking the occasion, the administration described new moves to make sure “that women have access to contraception” and force employers to pay for contraception. It’s also working to advance “education” of patients and healthcare providers on ensuring “access to emergency medical care required under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA)” (the Biden administration is attempting to use the statute to force emergency room doctors to perform abortions under certain circumstances). The fact sheet also highlights a renewed push “to support safe access to legal medication abortion.”