WASHINGTON (Fwrd Axis) — President Joe Biden on Friday called the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade a sad day for the country and vowed to do whatever he can as president to protect women’s rights.
Speaking from the White House, Biden said his administration would take actions to try to ease access to abortions, like defending women who want to travel to another state for an abortion.
“This is a sad day for the country, in my view, but it doesn’t mean the fight is over,” he said.
“This decision must not be the final word. My administration will use all of its appropriate lawful powers, but Congress must act. With your vote, you can act, you can have the final word,” Biden added. “This is not over.”
The decision by the Supreme Court comes in the same week they voted down a bill to restrict access to guns in the county.
Democrats are hoping to use the decision by the Supreme Court to energize their base to turn out in the midterm elections in November. However, polls have shown that the economy remains the number one issue for voters.
“This fall, Roe is on the ballot, personal freedoms are on the ballot, the right to privacy, liberty, equality, are all on the ballot,” Biden said.
The decision comes as the President is set to travel overseas on Saturday for a week of meetings with world leaders in Europe focused on the war in Ukraine, the global economy and China.
Biden said the Court was taking the country down an “extreme and dangerous path,” and said the decision would set America back.
“Make no mistake, this decision is a combination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law,” Biden said. “It’s a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error by the Supreme Court, in my view. The court has done what it has never done before, expressly takeaway a constitutional right.”
Biden said his administration would defend the “bedrock right” for women to travel to another state for an abortion. He also directed the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure contraception and abortion pills “are available to the fullest extent possible.”
“If any state or local official, high or low, tries to interfere with a woman exercising her basic right to travel. I will do everything in my power to fight that deeply un-American attack,” Biden said.
