President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order to preserve access to abortion in light of the Supreme Court’s decision earlier this summer to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The president said the order will help women travel out of state to receive abortions and advance research and data collection “to evaluate the impact that this reproductive health crisis is having on maternal health and other health conditions.”
Biden signed the executive order during the inaugural meeting of the administration’s recently created Task Force on “Reproductive Healthcare Access,” comprised of representatives from multiple departments across the federal government.
The order also directs Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to consider “all appropriate actions to ensure health care providers comply with federal non-discrimination laws so that women receive medically necessary care without delay.”
It thus included steps HHS should follow to supply health care providers with technical and legal guidance amid the varying sets of legal restrictions on abortion in separate states following the Supreme Court’s decision.
Biden further directs HHS to consider using taxpayer dollars, including from Medicaid, to support women traveling out-of-state for abortions.
Texas Right to Life told The Dallas Express that taxpayers’ money should not be used to fund abortions.
“Biden’s new executive order aims to force taxpayers to fund abortion travel. In the middle of a recession, this is a gross misuse of tax dollars and, more importantly, it’s morally abhorrent. The federal government should not push the murder of countless preborn children,” said Kim Schwartz, the group’s director of media and communications.
Last month, a bill that would have granted women the right to travel across state lines to seek abortions failed to pass the Senate after it received no support from Republicans.
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said in remarks on the Senate floor at the time that the issue is “not just about the right to travel and the right to health care; it’s deeper than that; it’s the right to live.”
“To be very clear, no state has banned interstate travel for adult women seeking to obtain an abortion,” Lankford continued. “No state has done that. Now, am I confident there are some people that are out there talking? Yes, but there’s also in this Senate 5,000 bills that have been filed, and how many of them are actually going to move? As it is in every legislature across the country and everyone in this body knows it.”
Republican Texas State Sen. Bryan Hughes, the author of the 6-week ban on abortions in Texas, echoed this sentiment last month.
“We will not be trying to restrict people from traveling. I’ve read stuff on the internet about that, you won’t see me supporting legislation that limits the ability to travel, nothing like that.”
Lankford added that Democrats are trying to “inflame” and “raise the what ifs.”
The new executive order builds on a previous order to protect “access to reproductive health care services” that Biden signed last month to protect access to medication abortion and emergency contraception, protect patient privacy, launch public education efforts, and protect those seeking and providing abortion services from potential penalties.
Separately, on Tuesday, the Justice Department sued Idaho over its law that will go into effect on August 25, which will criminalize nearly all abortions. Attorney General Merrick Garland is arguing that it violates federal law.
“On the day Roe and Casey were overturned, we promised that the Justice Department would work tirelessly to protect and advance reproductive freedom,” said AG Garland. “That is what we are doing, and that is what we will continue to do. We will use every tool at our disposal to ensure that pregnant women get the emergency medical treatment to which they are entitled under federal law. And we will closely scrutinize state abortion laws to ensure that they comply with federal law.”
