‘We Need Action’: Biden, Democrats Urged to Protect Abortion Access in Post-Roe US

“We need action, and we need it now.”

So wrote Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) in a New York Times opinion piece published Saturday, one day after the U.S. Supreme Court’s reactionary majority struck down Roe v. Wade, imperiling reproductive freedom and other civil rights for millions of people nationwide.

“The Supreme Court doesn’t get the final say on abortion,” the lawmakers argued. “The American people will have the last word through their representatives in Congress and the White House.”

Although President Joe Biden denounced the high court’s deeply unpopular 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization on Friday, he offered no concrete plans for protecting abortion access beyond urging voters to elect more Democrats in November’s pivotal midterms.

Warren and Smith agree with the president’s contention that protections once guaranteed by Roe are “on the ballot,” but they also insisted that numerous steps can and must be taken immediately to secure people’s ability to control their own bodies.

“Each of us can and should act—both elected officials and everyday Americans,” wrote Warren and Smith, the only senator to have ever worked at Planned Parenthood. “We can start by helping those who need access to an abortion.”

While the Senate’s passage of the House-approved Women’s Health Protection Act, which would enshrine reproductive rights into federal law, depends on convincing Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and other right-wing holdouts to repeal the chamber’s anti-democratic 60-vote filibuster rule, Warren and Smith argued that the White House has the power to swiftly protect access to abortion care.

Suggested actions, which Warren and Smith reiterated in their new essay, include “increasing access to abortion medication, providing federal resources for individuals seeking abortion care in other states, and using federal property and resources to protect people seeking abortion services locally.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland, for his part, did suggest Friday that the Justice Department will crack down on states that attempt to ban Mifepristone, abortion medication that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At least 11 states banned or severely restricted abortion within the first 24 hours of the Supreme Court’s decision. Fifteen more are expected to eliminate or drastically reduce legal access to abortion in the coming weeks, endangering the health and economic well-being of women across the U.S.

“Simply put,” Warren and Smith concluded, “we must restore our democracy so that a radical minority can no longer drown out the will of the people.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org, written by Kenny Stancil.