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President Biden signed an executive order Wednesday directing his health secretary to consider action to help patients traveling out of state for abortions.
The travel-related provision in the order calls on Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to consider inviting states to apply for Medicaid waivers when treating patients who cross state lines for reproductive health services.
The executive order, the second signed by Biden on reproductive health since the Supreme Court’s overturn Roe v. Wade, follows the administration’s call for the Department of Health and Human Services to explore all options to support Americans who live in states that have severely restricted access to abortion. The president’s actions came a day after Kansas voters rejected attempts to remove their state’s abortion protections.
“[Republicans] I have no idea about the power of American women,” Biden said Wednesday before signing the order. “Last night in Kansas they found out.”
After the Supreme Court ruling, Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland vowed to protect Americans’ ability to cross state lines to seek abortions and other reproductive health services.
Biden, who is self-isolating because he continues to test positive for the coronavirus, signed the executive order ahead of Vice President Harris’ first meeting of an interagency task force on access to reproductive health. The President joined the meeting virtually.
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The executive order also directs Becerra to consider actions to ensure health care providers comply with federal nondiscrimination laws to ensure women receive the medical care they need, which could include providing technical assistance to providers confused about obligations after the decision of the Supreme Court.
Finally, the order calls on Becerra to improve research and data collection on maternal health outcomes.
In early July, Biden signed an executive order that directed Becerra to identify ways the administration could help expand access to abortion and signaled his intention to protect access to medical abortion, or the abortion pill.
Last month, Biden referred to what he called “the terrible, extreme and, in my opinion, so wrong decision of the Supreme Court.”
He added: “The court has made it clear that it will not protect women’s rights – period. Period. Having made the decision based on a reading of a document that was frozen in time in 1860, when women didn’t even have the right to vote, the court is now effectively making America’s women go to the polls and restore many rights that they have just been taken from them.”
But many activists criticized Biden for reacting too slowly to the decision, especially given that a draft opinion leaked weeks before the official decision. Activists and some Democratic members of Congress have called on the administration to declare abortion access a public health emergency.
In some states, women who need medical care for miscarriages are getting care delayed or denied altogether because of legal confusion that puts some women’s lives at risk.
A group of more than 80 Democratic House lawmakers sent a letter to Biden and Becerra last month urging them to make abortion a public health emergency. But the White House has reservations about the move because it would provide little additional funding and is likely to end up in the Supreme Court, which could use the case to limit the federal government’s emergency powers.
Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report.
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