President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris celebrated endorsements from three major reproductive rights groups during a rally on Friday, as Democrats look for abortion be a galvanizing issue for voters in the 2024 election.
“We will not let the most personal of decisions fall into the hands of politicians,” Biden said, accepting the endorsements of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Emily's List. “Make no mistake, this election is about freedom on the ballot once again.”
Biden, Harris, first lady Jill Biden and second gentleman Douglas Emhoff all spoke at Friday’s event, which came just one day ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision — the ruling that overturned the nearly 50-year right to an abortion guaranteed in Roe v. Wade, returning the issue to the states. Since then, many Republican-controlled legislatures across the country have restricted the practice.
“I do believe this is a moment when we are seeing a national agenda, which is a full-on attack on so many of our hard-won rights and freedoms that we thought were long-settled,” Harris said on Friday.
Biden and fellow Democrats have already seen the power of the issue. An NBC News poll released on Thursday found six in 10 voters do not approve of the court’s decision to overturn Roe.
Biden on Friday mentioned that following the ruling, voters in deep red Kansas and Kentucky voted in favor of protecting abortion, saying “you all showed up and beat the hell out of them.”
Just a mile from where Biden spoke on Friday, former Vice President Mike Pence, speaking at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual conference, urged his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination to support a 15-week federal abortion ban, at minimum.
“We must not rest and we must not relent until we restore the sanctity of life to the center of American law in every state in this country,” Pence said.
Just ahead of the Dobbs decision, Biden signed an executive order, which seeks to increase contraceptive options, lower out-of-pocket costs, and make people more aware of ways to obtain contraception.
“It's by no means a substitute for a constitutional right to choose and make decisions about your own body,” Katie Keith, the Senior Advisor for Health Policy to the White House Gender Policy Council said in an interview with Spectrum News on Friday. “But we all know that contraception is also a very important part of making sure that women have the ability to make decisions about their health and their lives and their families.”
This marks the third executive order on reproductive health care access made by the Biden administration since the Supreme Court’s ruling last June. The first two orders, signed in July and August 2022, also sought to safeguard access to reproductive care services and bolster federal protections for people seeking abortions.
“We have done an incredible amount of work across the administration to implement those,” Keith said. She mentioned actions from the previous executive order included ensuring that women have access to emergency medical care, strengthening privacy protections for patients and providers and defending access to medication abortion.
The administration has held several events leading up to the anniversary of the Dobbs decision, which will culminate with a speech by Harris in Charlotte, North Carolina, on the official one-year anniversary this Saturday.
On Tuesday, the first lady held a roundtable with a group of women from around the country who have been denied medical care related to pregnancies. Last week, the White House hosted more than 80 state lawmakers from 41 states to discuss policy agenda and strategy to counter efforts in Republican-led states to restrict reproductive rights.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.