‘Cataclysmic and chaotic’: Abortion battle lines drawn as legal floodgates open | FarrahTomazin
– some are already pushing to ban abortion nationwide, while others are pressuring the states to stop people from accessing abortion drugs or from crossing state borders for treatment in places where it remains legal to terminate a pregnancy.
Two leading Democratic senators in the women’s reproductive rights space – progressive stalwart Elizabeth Warren and former Planned Parenthood staffer Tina Smith – have also urged Biden to declare a public health emergency, which they say would help protect access and unlock “critical resources and authority that states and the federal government can use to meet the surge in demand for reproductive health services.
First, it will seek to prevent states from banning pills used for medication abortion, such as mifepristone, that have been approved by the federal US Food and Drug Administration. As Biden said has said, any attempt to ban such pills would be “wrong and extreme and out of touch with the majority of Americans”.
To back this up, the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has issued advice showing employees would not violate the Assimilative Crimes Act if they continue to provide services and therefore could not be prosecuted under that legislation.But, beyond tweaking around the edges, there’s only so much Biden can do.