Biden mulls declaring public health emergency over abortion access and urges Americans to ‘keep protesting’

Emergency declaration would unlock more government funding and resources for abortion care

President Joe Biden has said he is considering declaring a public health emergency over abortion access as he urged Americans across the country to “keep protesting” the Supreme Court’s precedent-shattering ruling.

The president told reporters about his plans to protect the right to abortion during a brief pit stop on a bike ride near his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on Sunday.

He revealed that he was looking into the option of making an emergency declaration, which would unlock more government funding and resources for abortion care.

“That’s something I’m asking the medical people in the administration to look at, whether I have the authority to do that and what impact that would have,” he said.

Pro-choice advocates and other Democrats have been urging the president to declare a public health emergency ever since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling and pushed reproductive rights back by half a century across the country.

But so far the Biden administration has decided against it.

In a press conference on Friday, White House Gender Policy Council Director Jennifer Klein said that it was “not off the table” but that its effectiveness would be fairly limited.

“When we looked at the public health emergency, we learned a couple things: One is that it doesn’t free very many resources,” she said.

“It’s what’s in the public health emergency fund, and there’s very little money – tens of thousands of dollars in it. So that didn’t seem like a great option.

“And it also doesn’t release a significant amount of legal authority. And so that’s why we haven’t taken that action yet.”

On Sunday, Mr Biden said he doesn’t “have the authority” to reinstate Roe v Wade “as the “law of the land” and once again called on Congress to pass a law to protect abortion access across America.

When asked if he had a message to protesters who gathered outside the White House on Saturday, Mr Biden urged them to keep on demonstrating.

President Joe Biden stops to talk to reporters during a bike ride in Rehobeth Beach, Delaware, on 10 July (AFP via Getty Images)

“Keep protesting. Keep making your point. It’s critically important,” he said.

“We can do a lot of things to accommodate the rights of women.

“In the meantime, fundamentally, the only way to change this is to have a national law that reinstates Roe v Wade.”

The president’s comments come two days after he signed an executive order to ease access to abortion across the country, in response to the Supreme Court striking down Roe v Wade and growing pressure from his own party to take more decisive action on the issue.

The order aims to expand access to medication abortion and emergency contraception and to protect women – as well as their doctors – who are forced to travel to other states for the procedure.

Speaking from the White House as he signed the order, Mr Biden urged women to turn out to vote in the mid-terms in November to elect lawmakers who will stand up for giving women choice over their own bodies.

On 24 June, the US Supreme Court ruled in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, voting 6-3 in favour of a Mississippi law that outlaws abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy and – in the process – overturning the 1973 ruling that had protected the right to abortion access across the US.