A group of more than 80 House Democrats penned a letter to President Joe Biden on Tuesday asking him to use his authority to declare a public health emergency to protect nationwide access to abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that sent the issue back to state legislatures.
The group, made up of lawmakers from the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was led by Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas. The Texas Democrat called the issue of abortion access a “five-alarm fire for our health and liberty, which we must meet by using every available tool to defend abortion access.”
The lawmakers asked Biden to declare a national emergency under the Stafford Act, a provision enacted in 1988 that would give the president the authority to access disaster relief funds allocated by Congress to address the issue of abortion access.
The group also asked the Department of Health and Human Services to issue a public health emergency declaration as allowed under the Public Health Service Act and the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness (PREP) Act, which would give abortion providers “immunity from liability” – essentially allowing pharmacies, doctors and other health officials to offer abortion services and medications to out-of-state patients, regardless of state laws.
“In making your determination about issuing a Public Health Emergency declaration, we urge you to also consider the spillover effects of state laws banning abortion on the health systems in neighboring states that protect the legal right to abortion,” Tuesday’s letter, signed by 83 lawmakers, read in part. “Abortion providers have reported that patients in need of abortion are seeking care in other states, causing unprecedented strain on limited resources and delaying care for residents.”
Members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus will meet with HHS Sec. Xavier Becerra to discuss the issue on Wednesday, as was first reported by Punchbowl News.
In late June, Becerra announced HHS would take a number of steps to protect access to abortion medication, saying the federal government “requires our programs to provide medication abortion in limited circumstances, including life of the woman, rape, or incest.”
Last Friday, Biden used his limited federal powers to sign an executive order that formalized instructions to the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to push back on efforts to limit the ability of women to access federally approved abortion medication or to travel across state lines to access clinical abortion service
Biden said Sunday he is considering declaring a public health emergency to free up federal resources to promote abortion access even though the White House has said it doesn't seem like “a great option.”
He also offered a message to people enraged by the Supreme Court's ruling last month that ended a constitutional right to abortion and who have been demonstrating across the country: “Keep protesting. Keep making your point. It's critically important."
The president, in remarks to reporters during a stop on a bike ride near his family's Delaware beach house, said he lacks the power to force the dozen-plus states with strict restrictions or outright bans on abortion to allow the procedure.
“I don’t have the authority to say that we’re going to reinstate Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” he said, referring to the Supreme Court's decision from 1973 that had established a national right to abortion. Biden said Congress would have to codify that right and for that to have a better chance in the future, voters would have to elect more lawmakers who support abortion access.
This week, the House will consider a series of bills set to protect abortion access, though they are all expected to fail in the evenly-divided Senate.
One bill seeks to both protect women who must travel outside of their state to access abortion care; another, which is a new iteration of the Women’s Health Protection Act, would protect a woman’s right to seek an abortion and would outlaw restrictions on such procedures post-viability "when, in the good-faith medical judgment of the treating health care provider, continuation of the pregnancy would pose a risk to the pregnant patient's life or health."
A previous version of the bill passed the House last year, but failed to make it through the Senate.
Still, House lawmakers are hardly alone in asking the federal government to exercise more powers to protect access to abortion.
Even before the Supreme Court handed down the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., encouraged the president to preemptively take a series of executive actions – including to declare a national emergency and encourage HHS to do the same – in order to protect abortion.
“[Biden] can improve access to medication abortion,” Warren said in mid-June. “He can get a reproductive freedom ombudsman at HHS. He can enforce the free choice of provider requirements that are already in the law for Medicaid beneficiaries. And the Department of Justice can explore the possibility of providing abortion services on federal lands.”