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 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.