As the US on Saturday marked one year since the country’s supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, abortion rights supporters and politicians issued a call to action – and prepared for reproductive health to be a flashpoint of the 2024 presidential election.
The supreme court’s decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health reversed the landmark 1973 decision that had enshrined a federal right to abortion. In the wake of its overturning, more than one dozen states have green-lighted abortion bans, and many others have passed laws dramatically restricting access to the procedure.
“States have imposed extreme and dangerous abortion bans that put the health and lives of women in jeopardy, force women to travel hundreds of miles for care, and threaten to criminalize doctors for providing the health care that their patients need and that they are trained to provide,” Joe Biden said in a statement.
The president added: “Yet state bans are just the beginning. Congressional Republicans want to ban abortion nationwide, but go beyond that, by taking FDA-approved medication for terminating a pregnancy off the market and [to] make it harder to obtain contraception. Their agenda is extreme, dangerous, and out-of-step with the vast majority of Americans.
“My administration will continue to protect access to reproductive health care and call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v Wade in federal law once and for all.”
During a powerful speech in North Carolina on Saturday, Vice-President Kamala Harris called for the restoration of abortion rights across the US, saying, “Extremist Republicans in Congress have proposed to ban abortion nationwide. But I have news for them. We’re not having that. We’re not standing for that. We won’t let that happen. And by the way, the majority of Americans are with us.
“The majority of Americans, I do believe, agree that one does not have to abandon their faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body. The United States Congress must put back in place what the supreme court took away.”
On Twitter, Texas’s Democratic Congress member Jasmine Crockett described the period post-Dobbs as “a year of trauma & terror for women across the country, especially in states like Texas where Roe was our last line of defense”.
“My district is 40% Black and majority women. It’s the people I represent that are hurt by life-saving medical care the most,” she wrote. “North Texas has the highest rate of hospitalization due to pregnancy complications in the entire state.
“For all their talk about protecting babies, let me ask you this: What happens to the already born children of a mother who dies from pregnancy complications because she can’t get the treatment she needs during an ectopic pregnancy? Who’s protecting them?”
The US House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, decried “rightwing extremists on the supreme court” for “shamefully” reversing the decades-long precedent.
“Maga Republicans in Congress want to impose a nationwide ban on abortion care,” the New York Democrat warned, referring to the Donald Trump presidency’s Make American Great Again slogan. “House Dems are working hard to stop these extremists and restore reproductive freedom.”
As many issued calls to action, some took steps to protect abortion rights. Arizona’s Democratic governor Katie Hobbs on Friday signed an executive order to better protect abortion rights across the south-western state.
The executive order makes central all abortion-related prosecutions under Arizona’s attorney general so that local prosecutors don’t limit access to abortions. Hobbs’s executive order also directs state agencies not to aid in any investigations relating to providing, assisting, seeking or obtaining reproductive health care that would be legal in Arizona.
Hobbs’s order also calls on Arizona to refuse extradition requests from other states that want to prosecute persons seeking or providing legal abortion services in Arizona.
Amid Democrats’ calls for the restoration of abortion rights, a group of influential reproductive rights organizations – including Planned Parenthood – endorsed Biden and Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
A statement from Alexis McGill Johnson, head of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said: “Abortion is healthcare. … We need leaders who are committed to protecting our freedoms, not taking them away.”
While the upcoming presidential election is unlikely to be a landslide for either party – victories and losses in recent elections have been decided with thin margins – most American voters disagree with Roe’s reversal.
In an NBC News poll published Friday, 61% of voters said they disagreed with the court’s decision in Dobbs. Sixty-seven percent of women disapproved of the ruling.
Despite the fact that Roe’s reversal appears to have little popular support, anti-abortion leaders are describing the decision as a first step.
“We are at the starting line,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B Anthony Pro-Life America. “We have just begun. We have just begun a journey to start saving lives.”
Protests opposing the Dobbs decision are expected across the US throughout the weekend.
