The Biden administration is launching a PR and policy push around abortion access – with the White House seeing reproductive rights as key to winning the White House in 2024.
On Monday, the White House announced executive actions to increase access to emergency abortions and contraception across the country, including in Red states under strict restrictions.
It came after the government released a new ad on Sunday featuring a Texas gynecologist forced to leave the state to terminate her desired but unviable pregnancy.
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris is in Wisconsin today, launching a national “reproductive freedoms tour” that will see the VP visit more than a dozen states and tell stories about pregnant women affected by abortion restrictions.
The issue of abortion access is seen as a way to improve President Biden’s shaky re-election prospects as he trails in the polls about 39 percent approval.
The Biden administration’s latest major attack on abortion bans in red states is largely seen as a political move to boost lagging support in his party.
The map above assigns each state, territory, and the District of Columbia to one of five categories: Expanded Access, Protected, Unprotected, Hostile, and Illegal. Most restrictions and total bans. Abortion is protected by state law in 21 states and the District of Columbia and is at risk of being severely restricted or banned in twenty-six states and three territories
President Biden will launch educational campaigns to help patients, doctors and hospital staff better understand the law that guarantees emergency access to abortion in hospitals that receive federal funding, known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA).
The Department of Health and Human Services will also remind insurers and state health officials of their legal obligation to cover the costs of Food and Drug Administration-approved abortion medications and contraception prescribed by a doctor under Obamacare.
Biden will “hear directly from doctors on the front lines of the fallout” from the SCOTUS decision that gave Republican Party-led states the ability to restrict access to abortion.
After Roe v Wade was thrown out in June 2022, the White House told hospitals and doctors that they must offer abortions in the event of a medical emergency or if the patient’s health or life was at risk, regardless of state law.
But in practice, critics have argued that doctors are reluctant to perform abortions and that they have differing opinions about what constitutes a medical emergency. In most cases, doctors who violate state abortion restrictions face jail time and heavy fines.
The White House said ahead of its roundtable with reproductive rights experts: “HHS today announced a comprehensive plan to educate all patients about their rights and ensure hospitals meet their obligations under federal law.
“HHS will also distribute training materials for healthcare providers and establish a dedicated team of experts who will increase the department’s capacity to support hospitals and healthcare providers across the country in meeting federal requirements.”
GOP interpretations of the law have had dangerous consequences.
Mylissa Farmer, 41, was 18 weeks pregnant when her waters broke, putting her at risk of life-threatening complications – but hospitals in her home state of Missouri refused to perform an abortion despite her ‘baby dying inside her’.
She and her husband were forced to go to Missouri and Kansas, but doctors continued to give them a chilling message – despite her baby having no chance of survival and her being at high risk of life-threatening complications, their hands were legally tied and they could do nothing do to help her.
She ended up having an emergency abortion at a clinic in Illinois, where abortion is legal.
At the same time, the legal interpretation of EMTALA is decided by the Supreme Court, which is expected to rule in June.
The case concerns an Idaho law that a federal judge said was too strict in promising to charge doctors with a crime if they performed an emergency abortion to save a woman’s life.
In addition to hosting a roundtable discussion with his reproductive health task force and doctors affected by their states’ abortion bans, Vice President Kamala Harris will launch a multi-state campaign to build support for the administration.
She will start in Wisconsin, where she is expected to rail against Republican legislation to ban abortion after 14 weeks, which the state’s Democratic governor has vowed to veto.
Although the ongoing Republican primaries show that former President Trump effectively clinched the nomination, his hardline stance on abortion rights runs counter to public opinion on the issue.
A November poll by the Nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation showed that 58 percent of all voters, regardless of party affiliation, trust Democrats more on abortion rights, compared to 41 percent of all voters who trust Republicans more.
And a opinion research A survey last summer, just days after the one-year anniversary of the fall of Roe, found that 61 percent said reversing the law was a “bad thing,” while 38 percent called it a “good thing.”