Rehoboth Beach, Delaware — President Biden said Sunday that he is considering declaring a public health emergency to free up federal resources to promote abortion access, though the White House said that doesn’t seem like a “great option.”
He also had a message for people angered by last month’s Supreme Court ruling that ended the constitutional right to abortion and who have been demonstrating across the country: “Keep protesting. Keep voicing your opinion. This is extremely important.”
The president, in remarks to reporters during a bike stop near his family’s beach house in Delaware, said he lacked the power to force the dozen-plus states with strict abortion restrictions or outright bans to allow the procedure.
“I don’t have the authority to say we’re going to reinstate Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” he said, referring to the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established a national right to abortion. Mr. Biden said Congress would need to codify that right, and to have a better chance in the future, voters would need to elect more lawmakers who support abortion access.
President Biden stops to talk to reporters while biking at Gordon’s Pond State Park in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, on July 10, 2022. NICHOLAS KAM/AFP via Getty Images
Vice President Kamala Harris also urged voters to elect lawmakers who support abortion rights in the upcoming November election, telling “Face the Nation” that congressional action is needed to restore protections provided by Roe.
“We’ve got an election coming up in 120-something days, it’s going to be about who’s going to serve in Congress, and we need a Congress that’s pro-choice,” Harris said in an interview that aired Sunday.
Mr. Biden said his administration was trying to do “a lot of things to accommodate women’s rights” after the ruling, including considering declaring a public health emergency to free up federal resources. Such a move has been pushed by advocates, but White House officials have questioned both its legality and effectiveness and noted that it will almost certainly face legal challenges.
The president said he asked officials “to look at whether I have the authority to do this and what impact that would have.”
On Friday, Jen Klein, director of the White House Gender Policy Council, said it “doesn’t seem like a great option.”
“When we looked at the public health emergency, we learned a couple of things: One is that it doesn’t free up a lot of resources,” she told reporters. “That’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. It also does not release a significant amount of legal authority. therefore we have not yet taken this action.”
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