President Joe Biden is blasting the Supreme Court’s decision not to block Texas’ restrictive abortion law, and vowing to examine what steps the federal government can take to “ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions.”
In a statement on Thursday, Biden said, “The Supreme Court’s ruling overnight is an unprecedented assault on a woman’s constitutional rights under Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for almost fifty years.”
“By allowing a law to go into effect that empowers private citizens in Texas to sue health care providers, family members supporting a woman exercising her right to choose after six weeks, or even a friend who drives her to a hospital or clinic, it unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts,” he continued.
He went on to highlight a provision of the law that he says empowers “complete strangers” to “inject themselves in the most private and personal health decisions faced by women.”
Additionally, he labeled the law “extreme” for not allowing for an exception in cases of rape or incest.
“For the majority to do this without a hearing, without the benefit of an opinion from a court below, and without due consideration of the issues, insults the rule of law and the rights of all Americans to seek redress from our courts,” Biden continued. “Rather than use its supreme authority to ensure justice could be fairly sought, the highest Court of our land will allow millions of women in Texas in need of critical reproductive care to suffer while courts sift through procedural complexities.”
He noted that Chief Justice John Roberts said the ruling was not a “final ruling on the future of Roe,” but argued that “the impact of last night’s decision will be immediate and requires an immediate response.”
Finally, Biden said he is directing a “whole-of-government effort to respond to this decision” to see “what steps the Federal Government can take to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe, and what legal tools we have to insulate women and providers from the impact of Texas’ bizarre scheme of outsourced enforcement to private parties.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) also weighed in on the ruling calling it a “cowardly, dark-of-night decision to uphold a flagrantly unconstitutional assault on women’s rights and health.”
“SB8 delivers catastrophe to women in Texas, particularly women of color and women from low-income communities. Every woman, everywhere has the constitutional right to basic health care. SB8 is the most extreme, dangerous abortion ban in half a century, and its purpose is to destroy Roe v. Wade, and even refuses to make exceptions for cases of rape and incest. This ban necessitates codifying Roe v. Wade,” she said in a statement.
The California Democrat vowed that the House would “bring up Congresswoman Judy Chu’s Women’s Health Protection Act to enshrine into law reproductive health care for all women across America.”
The president’s statement comes after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against blocking the law which bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.