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Washington With the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and Democrats lacking the numbers in the U.S. Congress to codify national laws protecting abortion rights, there is growing frustration within the Democratic base and women’s groups for their lack of a proactive approach. The administration is on the issue, with President Joe Biden issuing an executive order on Friday — taking a limited set of measures — to protect access to reproductive health services.
In announcing the new measures, Biden called the court’s decision “horrific, extreme and, in my opinion, downright wrong.”
The SC decision leaves the decision on whether to provide abortion protections to states, and while Democratic states have expanded abortion-related rights, many Republican states have banned abortion outright.
The US president acknowledged the limitations of the executive order, reiterated that the only way out is for Congress to restore Roe v. Wade protections as federal law; and urged voters to cast ballots in the midterm elections scheduled for November.
Democrats hope inflation is a pressing issue at a time when the president’s approval ratings are at an all-time low, polls predict the party’s defeat in the House election, anger over the court decision, and abortion could lead to higher turnout. good for Democratic candidates. While celebrating the verdict, Republicans focused the election on issues such as inflation, immigration, law and order and Biden’s perceived weaknesses.
According to the White House fact sheet, Biden has asked the Secretary of Health and Human Services to take action and submit a report within 30 days on a series of measures to protect reproductive services.
These include protecting and expanding access to abortion care, especially medicines; ensuring emergency medical care, including updating guidelines to clarify physician responsibilities; expanding access to emergency contraception and long-acting reversible contraceptives such as the IUD conduct public education efforts; and work with attorneys to ensure “strong legal representation of patients, providers, and third parties across the country who lawfully seek or provide reproductive health care services,” including the right to travel abroad to seek abortion.
Biden’s second broad set of measures has to do with protecting patient privacy. These include addressing “the transfer and sale of sensitive health-related data, combating digital surveillance associated with reproductive health services, and protecting those seeking reproductive health services from inaccurate information, fraudulent schemes or deceptive practices.”
The third group of measures concerns the safety of patients, providers and third parties who provide, distribute and deliver reproductive health services. This includes “efforts to protect mobile clinics that have been deployed to the border to provide care to out-of-state patients.”
The final set of measures has to do with ensuring a coordinated approach, with Biden appointing a new interagency task force on reproductive health care access.
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