Dive Brief:
- President Joe Biden said this weekend he is looking into declaring a national public health emergency for abortion care access.
- The administration will look into the authority needed to declare a PHE and the impact it would have, Biden told reporters Sunday during a break from a bike ride. The remarks came days after Biden signed an executive order aimed at protecting access to abortion care and other reproductive health services like contraception and emergency care for pregnant people.
- The White House considered a PHE declaration last month, but officials decided the effects would be incremental and it was not worth the legal battles that would likely follow, Bloomberg reported.
Dive Insight:
Biden has said repeatedly that the best way to preserve abortion access is for Congress to codify Roe v. Wade into law. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement that the House will pass such legislation this week, but previous efforts have failed in the Senate.
The administration had concerns that declaring the new PHE designation would take funds away from federal efforts to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the report said. A previously-enacted public health emergency regarding the opioid crisis was also renewed this year.
About half of U.S. states are expected to ban or severely restrict abortion care following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that overturned the precedent that had been in effect for nearly five decades.
Before signing the executive order Friday, Biden slammed the SCOTUS majority opinion and said that the ruling was not based on the Constitution or on history, adding the practice of medicine should not be "frozen in the 19th century."
“The choice we face as a nation is between the mainstream and the extreme, between moving forward and moving backwards, between allowing politicians to enter the most personal parts of our lives and protecting the right to privacy … embedded in our Constitution,” he said.