(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden reminded voters that the fight for women’s reproductive freedom is not over despite the Supreme Court’s decision on regulation of the abortion pill mifepristone on Thursday, which preserved access to the medication nationwide.
“Today’s decision does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive freedom continues,” Biden said in a statement. “It does not change the fact that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, and women lost a fundamental freedom.”
The Supreme Court decision and Biden’s comments come in an election year where abortion is a key issue for many voters. Both Biden and his opponent, former President Donald Trump, have worked to address abortion as they campaign.
Biden said that although the decision means that “women can continue to access” mifepristone, he pointed to other laws to show that the fight for access to reproductive freedoms is ongoing.
“Women are being turned away from emergency rooms, or forced to go to court to plead for care that their doctor recommended or to travel hundreds of miles for care,” Biden said in the statement. “Doctors and nurses are being threatened with jail time, including life in prison, for providing the health care they have been trained to provide.”
He said that this efforts was part of an “extreme and dangerous agenda” from Republican elected officials to “ban abortion nationwide.”
“The stakes could not be higher for women across America,” Biden said.
The Biden campaign stressed that the state of abortion rights in America remains on shaky ground.
“Here’s the reality: this case, brought on by Donald Trump’s allies, was only one tactic in a broader, relentless strategy to strip away access to reproductive freedom everywhere in this country,” campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told reporters on a press call hours after the Supreme Court’s decision.
Chavez Rodriguez and Mini Timmaraju, president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, stressed that a second Trump presidency would threaten reproductive rights.
“Let me be clear: this attack on medication abortion is only possible because Donald Trump overturned Roe v. Wade,” Timmaraju said, referring to the former president’s appointment of conservative justices who voted in 2022 in favor of striking down the federal protection for abortion.
Trump said in April that abortion should be decided by the states. He has not said if he personally favors a certain number of weeks into pregnancy at which state-level bans should take effect, though he has publicly criticized a six-week ban in Florida and, more recently, talked privately about the idea of a national 16-week ban with exceptions, sources told ABC News in February.
Biden also vowed that he and Vice President Kamala Harris will fight for abortion rights.
“We will continue to fight to ensure that women in every state get the health care they need and we will continue to call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law — that is our commitment,” Biden said.
Harris said a vote for Biden is a vote for reproductive freedom.
“The contrast is stark: While Trump relentlessly attacks reproductive freedoms, President Biden and I will never stop fighting to protect them,” Harris said in a statement. “Americans have repeatedly made it clear they want more freedom, not less, and they will make their voices heard at the ballot box once again this November.”
Mifepristone is the first pill taken in a two-drug regimen for medication abortion, which is the most common method of abortion in the country.
The court’s ruling means mifepristone will remain available under preexisting conditions, which include allowing women to receive the medication by mail and without any in person dispensation requirement.
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