WASHINGTON, July 1 (Reuters) – President Joe Biden predicted on Friday that some U.S. states would try to arrest women for crossing state lines to get an abortion after the Supreme Court struck down a constitutional right to the procedures nationwide.
Thirteen Republican-led states banned or severely limited the procedure under so-called “trigger laws” after the court overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision last week. Women in those states who want an abortion may have to travel to states where it remains legal.
Convening a virtual meeting on abortion rights with Democratic state governors on Friday, Biden said he thought “people will be shocked when the first state … tries to arrest a woman for crossing a state line to get health care services’.
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He added: “And I don’t think people believe that’s going to happen. But it will happen and it will telegraph to the entire country that this is a giant deal that goes beyond; I mean it affects all your fundamental rights’.
Biden said the federal government will act to protect women who have to cross state lines to get an abortion and ensure they have access to the drugs in states where they are banned.
New Mexico’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, told the meeting that her state “will not cooperate” with any attempts to track down women who have had abortions to punish them. “We will not extradite,” she said.
U.S. President Joe Biden boards Air Force One to depart for Washington from Madrid Torrejon Airport, Madrid, Spain, June 30, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
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Abortion rights groups have filed laws in multiple states that seek to preserve women’s ability to terminate pregnancies.
Judges in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Utah have since issued rulings preventing those states from implementing new restrictive abortion laws, while the Ohio Supreme Court on Friday refused to block the Republican-led state from imposing an abortion ban. Read more
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul told the group that “only a few states” will have to address women’s health across the country.
“There’s such stress out there,” Hochul said. “This is a matter of life and death for American women,” she added.
Biden also told the group that he does not have enough votes in the Senate to override the supermajority rule, known as a filibuster, to codify Roe v. Wade protections into law.
He had proposed that senators eliminate the filibuster, but the proposal was rejected by aides to key Democratic lawmakers. Read more
“(The filibuster) should not prevent us from being able to (codify Roe),” Biden said.
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Reporting by Rami Ayoub, Jeff Mason and Susan Heavey Editing by Alistair Bell
Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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