Joe Biden to sign executive order expanding contraception access ahead of anniversary of Roe v Wade overturn
United States President Joe Biden will sign an executive order expanding access to contraception, almost one year after the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion.
On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court sided with the state of Mississippi in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, allowing the southern state ban most abortions.
The decision reversed Roe v Wade, which for 49 years constitutionally barred US states from banning abortion.
President Biden marked the anniversary by signing an executive order and pledging to fight back against states seeking to restrict reproductive healthcare in the last year.
The White House said the Dobbs decision has had a ‘devastating impact’ on women’s health, and noted that approximately 23million American women of reproductive age now live under an abortion ban.
The order explicitly protects women’s rights to contraception and family planning services, which it calls ‘essential to ensuring that all people have control over personal decisions about their own health, lives, and families.’
White House Senior Advisor Jen Klein said the executive order will increase the availability of contraception through private insurers through the Affordable Care Act.
‘We’re really trying to do three separate things all related to each other,’ Klein said. ‘The first is increased and expanded contraceptive options. The second is to lower out-of-pocket costs. And the third is to raise awareness about what options are available.’
Simultaneously, a series of pro-choice groups, including Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Emily’s List, endorses Biden’s reelection campaign on Friday.
Since the overturning of Roe v Wade, advocates for reproductive rights have been sounding the alarm that the constitutional right to contraception could be under attack next.
Although the Dobbs decision only rolled back the constitutional right to an abortion, critics have pointed out other rights were won for Americans through the same legal reasoning.
‘The right to terminate a pregnancy arose straight out of the right to purchase and use contraception,’ Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan wrote in their dissent. ‘Either the mass of the majority’s opinion is hypocrisy, or additional constitutional rights are under threat.’
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurrence that several landmark cases, including Griswold v Connecticut, the case that established the constitutional right to contraception, should be overturned to ‘correct the record.’
Other cases decided on these grounds include Loving v Virginia, which protects interracial marriage, and Obergefell v Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage.
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