Two weeks to the day after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe, President Joe Biden’s White House announced an executive order intended to safeguard abortion access. The order would direct Health and Human Services to protect abortion and contraception access, as well as emergency medical care for pregnant women. It would also convene a group of private volunteer lawyers, and also ensure the privacy of patients’ health records.
“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,” the White House said in a statement. “Until then, he has committed to doing everything in his power to defend reproductive rights and protect access to safe and legal abortion.”
The White House says the order would also establish an interagency task force on reproductive access that will include the attorney general and will be led by HHS and the White House Gender Policy Council. Friday’s order would build upon a series of actions already taken by the Biden administration in the wake of Dobbs, including an additional $3 million to HHS-funded providers and clinics, paid leave for federal workers traveling for reproductive health care, and the Department of Defense ensuring protections for DoD civilians and members of the military and their families also seeking such care.
In the days since the court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, many in Biden’s party have called on the president to take swift action, particularly after a Democratic-led attempt to codify Roe into law earlier this year failed in the Senate. Some Democrats remain reluctant to change Senate rules, namely the filibuster, to pass protections along party lines. (Biden has since supported a narrow carve-out to the filibuster to specifically protect abortion access.) Even before the Supreme Court issued its ruling, following the leak of a draft opinion to Politico, Biden said his administration was looking into the use of executive orders to protect women’s reproductive rights. “There’s some executive orders I could employ, we believe—we’re looking at that right now,” Biden said in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel last month.
Just within the two weeks since the ruling, more than a dozen states either have banned abortions in all or most cases or have bans set to take effect within the coming days or weeks. More than half a dozen other states have abortion bans waiting in the wings, pending legal action.
But those within his own party have criticized Biden for not acting boldly enough to address these sudden losses of women’s rights. Lawmakers like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren demanded the White House look into using federal lands to set up emergency abortion clinics, a proposal the White House said would have “dangerous ramifications.” Biden has also been dogged by reports that he had allegedly planned to nominate an antiabortion judge to a lifetime appointment in a deal with Mitch McConnell on the day the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
The full repercussions of the Dobbs ruling have yet to come into focus. The political landscape regarding abortion access across the country is shifting every day, leaving more than half the country in limbo. And with Roe overturned, antiabortion lawmakers are seizing an opportunity to restrict women’s access to reproductive health services, introducing legislation that, for example, eclipses just banning abortion but goes as far as criminalizing women who have abortions and those who provide them. But to what extent the Biden administration’s executive order will mitigate the draconian legislation being introduced remains to be seen.
Biden is expected to speak from the Roosevelt Room alongside Vice President Kamala Harris and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra Friday morning to sign the executive order.
This post originally appeared on Vanity Fair.
