President Joe Biden sharply denounced the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decisionFriday was the day that Roe v. Wade was overturned and abortion on demand ended in America. This happened after nearly 50 years.
“The health and life of women in this nation are now at risk,” Biden said in remarks at the White House shortly after 12:30 p.m.
Biden called on Congress to “restore the protections of Roe v. Wade as federal law.”
While urging Americans “to keep all protests peaceful,” Biden used harsh language to describe conservative Supreme Court justices as well as their ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
It is “an extreme and dangerous path the court is now taking us on,” the president said, but pro-abortion activists should use “no intimidation” in protesting the Dobbs decision.
“Violence is never acceptable,” Biden said. “Threats and intimidation are not speech.”
Biden has not yet commented on the arrest in California of a man accused of trying to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The high court ruled in Dobbs that the Constitution doesn’t confer a right to abortion, overturned both Roe v. Wade (1973) and the related case of Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey(1992), and gave Americans the authority to regulate abortion through their elected representatives.
Biden, a Catholic, opposed Roe in his early political career, which saw him serve more than 30 years in Senate and eight years as vice-president. He made forceful comments after a draft majority opinion in Dobbs leaked May 2, but up to that point he had never said the word “abortion” aloud as president, Reuters noted.
On Friday, Biden accused conservative justices of expressly taking away “a constitutional right” by overturning both Roe and Casey, the related 1992 case.
Biden named the three justices that he appointed by Donald Trump as the ones who had tipped the balance in favor of Roe, but he did not name them. They are Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, in addition to Kavanaugh.
“Make no mistake,” Biden said of the Dobbs ruling, “this decision is the culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law.”
Justice Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts joined Alito in the majority opinion, as well as Gorsuch and Barrett and Kavanaugh.
Kavanaugh and Thomas both filed concurring opinions. Roberts, however, disagreed that the Mississippi abortion law must be upheld. Therefore, the concurring opinion was 5-4 and not 6-3.
Justices Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor filed a dissenting view. Stephen Breyer also filed one.
“I believe Roe v Wade was the correct decision,” Biden said at one point, and reversing it is “a tragic error.”
He said Roe reached a “careful balance” between a woman’s right to choose and states’ authority to regulate abortion.
State laws that take effect with the overturning of Roe are “extreme” and will “force women to bear their rapist’s child,” the president said, before seeming to lose track of his point.
“It just stuns me,” he said.
>>> Related: Check out What Happens to Abortion in Each State After Roe v Wade is Overturned
“This is a sad day for the country, in my view,” Biden said. “But that doesn’t mean the fight’s over.”
He said the abortion issue will be “on the ballot” in local, state, and federal elections this fall.
Meanwhile, the president said, the Justice Department and the rest of his administration will defend “the bedrock right” of women to travel to get an abortion as well as to access contraceptives and abortion drugs.
Biden reiterated past accusations that the Supreme Court also wants to strip away Americans’ “right of privacy” in health care, birth control, and same-sex marriage.
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