President Biden Executive Order on Abortion: Read It For Yourself
As promised, President Biden has issued an executive order on abortion post-Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
President Biden signed an executive order Friday that takes incremental steps to preserve abortion access — but he underscored that it would take political change to restore the rights removed when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
At least nine states have banned abortion so far — including Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin. A dozen more states are expected to prohibit or restrict the procedure in the coming weeks.
“I’m asking the Justice Department that, much like they did in the Civil Rights era, to do everything in their power to protect these women seeking to invoke their rights,” Biden said at the White House on Friday.
The executive order pledges to ensure the safety of abortion patients and providers, including setting up mobile clinics near the borders of states restricting abortion access. It also seeks to convene private, pro bono lawyers to offer support to people crossing state lines to get an abortion.
Another part of the order directs the secretary of Health and Human Services to issue a report in the next 30 days outlining additional actions to protect medication abortion, expand access on emergency contraception and IUDs, and increase public education around reproductive rights.
The Biden administration is also calling on the Federal Trade Commission — an independent body — to consider taking steps to protect the privacy of people who are looking for information about abortion services.
To help coordinate the administration’s policies, the order will create a new task force on reproductive health care.
Read the president’s Executive Order on Abortion for yourself here:
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. Nearly 50 years ago, Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), articulated the United States Constitution’s protection of women’s fundamental right to make reproductive healthcare decisions. These deeply private decisions should not be subject to government interference. Yet today, fundamental rights — to privacy, autonomy, freedom, and equality — have been denied to millions of women across the country.
Eliminating the right recognized in Roe has already had and will continue to have devastating implications for women’s health and public health more broadly. Access to reproductive healthcare services is now threatened for millions of Americans, and especially for those who live in States that are banning or severely restricting abortion care. Women’s health clinics are being forced to close — including clinics that offer other preventive healthcare services such as contraception — leaving many communities without access to critical reproductive healthcare services. Women seeking abortion care — especially those in low-income, rural, and other underserved communities — now have to travel to jurisdictions where services remain legal notwithstanding the cost or risks.
In the face of this health crisis, the Federal Government is taking action to protect healthcare service delivery and promote access to critical reproductive healthcare services, including abortion. It remains the policy of my Administration to support women’s right to choose and to protect and defend reproductive rights. Doing so is essential to justice, equality, and our health, safety, and progress as a Nation.
Sec. 2. Definitions. (a) The term “agency” means any authority of the United States that is an “agency” under 44 U.S.C. 3502(1), other than one considered to be an independent regulatory agency, as defined in 44 U.S.C. 3502(5).
(b) The term “reproductive healthcare services” means medical, surgical, counseling, or referral services relating to the human reproductive system, including services relating to pregnancy or the termination of a pregnancy.
Sec. 3. Protecting Access to Reproductive Healthcare Services. (a) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall submit a report to the President:
(i) identifying potential actions:
(A) to protect and expand access to abortion care, including medication abortion; and
(B) to otherwise protect and expand access to the full range of reproductive healthcare services, including actions to enhance family planning services such as access to emergency contraception;
(ii) identifying ways to increase outreach and education about access to reproductive healthcare services, including by launching a public awareness initiative to provide timely and accurate information about such access, which shall:
(A) share information about how to obtain free or reduced cost reproductive healthcare services through Health Resources and Services Administration-Funded Health Centers, Title X clinics, and other providers; and
(B) include promoting awareness of and access to the full range of contraceptive services, as well as know-your-rights information for those seeking or providing reproductive healthcare services; and
(iii) identifying steps to ensure that all patients ‑- including pregnant women and those experiencing pregnancy loss, such as miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies — receive the full protections for emergency medical care afforded under the law, including by considering updates to current guidance on obligations specific to emergency conditions and stabilizing care under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, 42 U.S.C. 1395dd, and providing data from the Department of Health and Human Services concerning implementation of these efforts.
(b) To promote access to reproductive healthcare services, the Attorney General and the Counsel to the President shall convene a meeting of private pro bono attorneys, bar associations, and public interest organizations in order to encourage lawyers to represent and assist patients, providers, and third parties lawfully seeking these services throughout the country.
Sec. 4. Protecting Privacy, Safety, and Security. (a) To address potential heightened safety and security risks related to the provision of reproductive healthcare services, the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall consider actions, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to ensure the safety of patients, providers, and third parties, and to protect the security of clinics (including mobile clinics), pharmacies, and other entities providing, dispensing, or delivering reproductive and related healthcare services.
(b) To address the potential threat to patient privacy caused by the transfer and sale of sensitive health-related data and by digital surveillance related to reproductive healthcare services, and to protect people seeking reproductive health services from fraudulent schemes or deceptive practices:
(i) The Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is encouraged to consider actions, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law (including the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. 41 et seq.), to protect consumers’ privacy when seeking information about and provision of reproductive healthcare services.
(ii) The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall consider actions, including providing guidance under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, Public Law 104-191, 110 Stat. 1936 (1996) as amended by Public Law 111-5, 123 Stat. 115 (2009), and any other statutes as appropriate, to strengthen the protection of sensitive information related to reproductive healthcare services and bolster patient-provider confidentiality.
(iii) The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall, in consultation with the Attorney General, consider actions to educate consumers on how best to protect their health privacy and limit the collection and sharing of their sensitive health-related information.
(iv) The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Chair of the FTC, consider options to address deceptive or fraudulent practices related to reproductive healthcare services, including online, and to protect access to accurate information.
Sec. 5. Coordinating Implementation Efforts. (a) The Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Director of the Gender Policy Council shall establish and co-chair an Interagency Task Force on Reproductive Healthcare Access (Task Force). Additional members shall include the Attorney General and the heads of other agencies as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Director of the Gender Policy Council. The Task Force shall work to identify and coordinate activities to protect and strengthen access to essential reproductive healthcare services. In addition, the Task Force shall coordinate Federal interagency policymaking, program development, and outreach efforts to address barriers that individuals and entities may face in seeking and providing reproductive healthcare services. The Department of Health and Human Services shall provide funding and administrative support as may be necessary for the performance and functions of the Task Force.
(b) The Attorney General shall provide technical assistance, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, concerning Federal constitutional protections to States seeking to afford legal protection to out-of-State patients and providers who offer legal reproductive healthcare.
Sec. 6. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
THE WHITE HOUSE,
July 8, 2022.
Congratulations, President Biden, you make the emergency response speed of President Bush look good.
Over two months warning, and this is what you give us.
I especially like how much of this is ‘shall consider actions’. You know when you _could_ have had your people start considering actions?
The moment you got into office, because this entire thing was _really obvious_.Report
Policy making takes time. Honestly a 2-month turnaround strikes me as blisteringly fast.Report
…a 2 months turn around to start looking into the issue?
A huge chunk of this is literally just telling executive branch agencies to look into possibilities about doing things.
You know, the sort of thing he should have told them to do the moment he took office, much less the moment the Supreme Court decision leaked.Report
Sigh, I really hate Green Lanternism. Apparently people are angry at him for making the perfectly realistic and constitutional observation that Roe can’t be codified into federal law until Democrats have bigger majorities in the Senate. The President is not a bronze age priest-king with absolute power. A big problem with left leaning people is that they want the Democrats to be as ruthless as Republicans but only issues that they care about it. Not on others,Report
I’m gratified to see polls trending our way in terms of voter awareness and enthusiasm but it’s still frustrating that we saw Dobbs coming in November of 2016.
The thing about Republicans that we should emulate is the idea that every single office at every level of government is vital, from the county water board to the Municipal Planning commission to the school board.Report
Republicans are aided by wingnut welfare at the front and back end at politics. The Democratic Party is no piker when it comes to money but the ability to subsidize politicians at the front end and give them something of a sweet gig at a think tank or something when they leave office is much less.Report
I am not doing green lanternism, I am doing the observation that all these things he’s asking for agencies to look into, should have been looked into the moment he took office.
Maybe there is nothing he can do, but he shouldn’t waited until this point to bother to vaguely ask his cabinet to look into it!!Report
A lot of that “looking into” simply I’m loves taking stuff off shelves and out of the proverbial desk drawer, checking to see if there’s any updates needed and then telling the WH what it’s options are. I have no doubt my HHS and DoJ colleagues have indeed had ideas and plans and drafts of all sorts of things. That kind of contingency work is one thing we get paid for.Report
I mean, I’m glad some of this stuff might already exist, but that sorta makes it even more damning that Biden apparently didn’t care enough to bother to ask for it until now.
Like, this executive order makes me legitimately angry, not that Biden is doing this, but this is, literally, something he should have done _a year_ ago.
Absolutely none of this was a surprise with the current court makeup…and then we had a leak beforehand!!
He should have had all the responses to him in front of him, ready to go. We shouldn’t be in a ‘In thirty days, people will report back to me and I will decide things’, we should have had, two weeks ago, ‘Here is the plan I put together June 2021 after months of working with my various agencies and listening to their recommendations…’.
…actually, a good chuck of this is stuff he could have put in place even before the court decision. Like emphasizing medical privacy of people looking into abortion services and stuff like that.Report
Look, you and everyone else needs to take a deep breath and ask yourself a serious question – if all the crises the Administration has on its plate (and there are many) which is the most important? Then ask how do his responses help or hurt that overriding crisis.
Because here’s the thing – conservatives are going to keep humming up the works to keep him on his heels through the midterms because they want him – and us – to loose. They want us all too tired to vote, much less to fight back. So they will keep flooding the zone with sh!t sensing that liberals, leftists, and moderate independents will give up, eat our own and be done. Then they will seize control and not give it back.
Am I thrilled about this course of action? No. Am I angry that Democrats ceded the state houses and governorships to set up a country where half of the states have clamped shut abortion rights while they work to roll back every hood liberal victory of my life time? You bet I am.
But in the dire place we find ourselves continuing to gut the last vestige of a defense we have left means they win. And democracy dies.
So bust on him all you want. But at least own the damage that it does.Report
No.
Because that is not how the world works, and that is what is always used to tamp down criticism.
The problem here is Biden’s frankly-absurd and unprepared response to this, not people pointing out that that his response was absurd and very unprepared.
I refuse to continue the ‘Do not criticise the complete lack of elected Democrats to do anything, that’s what gets Republicans elected.’
No, what gets Republicans elected is elected Democrats perpetually doing nothing.Report
Before anyone else accuses me of Green Lanterism, let quickly modify that to ‘No, what gets Republicans elected is elected Democrats perpetually not even bothering to try to do anything.’
Failing to do something because of Republicans is something else. It at least looks like _effort_. If Biden put a bunch of rules in place and conservative courts blocked them, well, at least that would be something.
But this? It’s nothing.Report
And I find ‘Consider the optics of complaining about this, it could depress turnout’ to be incredibly annoying.
Maybe Biden should have considered the optics of not bothering to have a plan in place and waiting two weeks to even start asking people to help make him one!
Maybe we should care about those optics a bit more. Maybe we should consider how that is going to depress turnout.Report
You missed my entire point as well as my criticism of this administration – which don’t forget I currently work for.
Criticize away. I sure do. But understand that it feeds the Right’s narrative that democrats can’t govern and so shouldn’t be allowed to govern. And it also means that all the good the administration say ration has done dealing with all the sh!t left to them gets buried because good news never leads.
And let me say again that not trashing the filibuster to deal with stuff like this it bad tactics and bad strategy. But so is eating our own when we need all hands on deck to stop the slide.Report
You don’t want to consider the possibility of the problem being the fact that Democrats, objectively, can’t govern?
Or, I guess, a better claim is that they _won’t_ govern. Because Democrats think the thing to do is to constantly attempt to beg and plead with Republicans instead of just calling them what they are, proto-fascists who are rapidly losing the ‘proto-‘ part, and start actually preparing for war in every avenue.
The Republicans should not be in charge of this country because they are leading us very directly to fascism. The Democrats should not be in charge of this country because they are spineless corporate sellouts who blubber about norms and bipartisanship while children are taken away from parents and 10-year-olds are forced to give birth.
The situation the Democratic party has set up is that the left is held hostage by Democrats by the threat of the Republicans, with ‘Possibly can slow down the Republicans’ _literally_ the only reason we’ve voting for you, so you PROBABLY WANT TO ACTUALLY OPPOSE THE REPUBLICANS AT SOME POINT.
Because you are, objectively, completely failing at that. No, again…not ‘failing’, you could fail anyway. We’d understand if you tried and fail. But you’re not even trying.
Hey, fun question: What has the Biden administration prepared for the day when Texas outright bans adult trans health care?
Like, you’re prepared for this, right? You’ve seen this incredibly obvious next thing happening, right?
Or are you utterly useless, and it will shock everyone, and you’ll…wait a few weeks and then sorta poll the rest of the government to see what they possibly could do about it?
Gee, if only we were talking about that, where the Biden administration can make some logical claim of ‘We shouldn’t do that’ and ‘We can’t really do that’.
We are, instead, talking about the Biden administration completely and utterly failing to prepare for a completely obvious thing.Report
Failure to act prior to this does not mean failure to prepare. Do you really think we all sit around with our thumbs up our collective backsides waiting for the next pronouncement from the gods to decide what to do?
Like I said, mgr and the administration have been managing dozens of crises – some real some manufactured for political gain by republicans – since he walked in. He can’t get ever one perfect from the get go.Report
“Look, the fact that I wasn’t at the starting line when the starter pistol went off, and had to walk out of the locker room to the starting place and then start running, doesn’t mean I wasn’t prepared for the race!”
I mean, I’m pretty certain it means you were unprepared in a very specific way, ie, not being in place, despite you claiming to have done a lot of training.
You’re claiming a bunch of stuff, but we can see this executive order and what it says, which implies what hasn’t been done yet, because if that had been done already the president wouldn’t be ordering it to now happen, and would in fact be doing the recommendations.
And you can’t explain why this wasn’t already done at the start of the administration, or done two months ago.
So you keep deflecting, trying to claim I’m asking for other things.
It’s a little amazing how you keep pretending I’m asking for perfection or victories or things that can’t happen.
I am literally asking for Democrats to actually make some sort of plan about the future when Republicans do horrific things, and then immediately put those plans into actions when those things happen.
I’m not even asking for the plans to be good! Just for them to exist, already, as if the administration has the awareness of a literal child and can make educated guesses of things that will happen in the future before they happen!Report
You are the damn US government, somewhere in a filing cabinet in a sub level of the pentagon, there’s a very detailed plan what to do if France invades the US riding weaponized giant bees.
But no Democratic plan for if the Republican strike down Roe v Wade, a thing they’ve insisted they’re going to do for 40 years and made it extremely clear they were going to do this administration, and then it leaked that they actually were going to do it over a month before they did.
You’ll forgive me if I think this is a level of incompetence hitherto unseen in the universe.Report
What can the federal government do about abortion? Practically nothing. What does this EO do? Practically nothing. What was its purpose? To keep the base riled up. Why did it take two months? Because the base was already riled up for the past two months, and they couldn’t push it off any further. What are they hoping for from the EO? Anything that they can get into the media after Labor Day.Report
And you will forgive me if I am beyond weary of your continuing to insult me and my two
Million career feds coworkers who are in fact trying to keep ahead of the sh!t avalanche rolling down hill in us every day.
I suspect my colleagues at the WH have plans. And Joe Biden did have a vision. That vision is how we got new investment in infra structure, the first bipartisan gun bill in over two decades, Covid 19 down to almost endemic levels, and unemployment back to more Covid levels.
Are we where I want us? No. Will we get there if Biden looses the White House after loosing congress? No.
But what battle do you want to fight – because down here in the trenches there are about two dozen major conflagrations going on each day with societal implications. Even the best plans can’t always take on all that in the time frame you want.Report
The battle I want you to fight is the one that attempts to stop Republicans from stripping rights from half the population, and which is merely a stepping stone for more stripping of rights.
And not, to use your example, an 'infrastructure bill'. The "forcing 10-year-old children to give birth to their rapist's babies" problem is in front of the infrastructure thing.
This really is not complicated or hard at all. Do I need to make a list? Because I will. Let’s go:
The actual first item on that list is ‘Keep Republicans from subverting the next election’, because without that, there is no list.
The next item is ‘Push back on the Republican attacks on women and LGBTQ+ people in every way you can, not just legally but also using the bully pulpit.’
The item after that is probably doing something about the police, but you’ve preemptively given up on that idea.
Then…you know, climate change.
Oh, and stop pretending that Covid is over and doing dumb stuff that continues it, like having the CDC shorten isolation recommendations.
LIke, I can keep going, if you want me to. But here’s a hint: Infrastructure is not on that list. It literally is not. Feel free to do it after you do all your important chores of trying to keep a functioning democracy with basic human rights, and as a bonus do it without complete civilization collapse due to disease or weather in the near future.Report
Speaking as an observer, I think you’re both talking about slightly different things.
The government (as 2 million people) doesn’t work on one specific thing. Workers have assigned tasks, and do varying levels of quality work on them. The vast majority of government workers have no say on policy and very little latitude. So criticism of the policy people isn’t a criticism of each government worker. But likewise, it’s up to the policy people to ask for information on an invasion of France or Title X clinics, and build policy recommendations from there.Report
You are largely correct. My agency 1 as a natural resources focused entity – isn’t going to weigh in on the abortion battle and won’t be asked to be a part of the federal response to that issue. But we will be out of the response to the gutting of chevron.Report
As a voter I am trying to keep a functioning democracy. As a federal civil servant I took an oath regarding enemies of the constitution that I take seriously. So does every other civil servant.
As pinky notes astutely below (!) your beef is not with egg administration – i.e. the civil service – your beef is with a few high placed policy people in the WH.
Understand however that Biden’s economic successes – including the infrastructure bill – can ameliorate some of the hurt that has been channeled into the abortion debate and they can motivate voters to support him and democrats in ways the abortion debate won’t. Blue collar steel workers will vote for him because that bill gives them long term work. That’s important to keeping power.Report
…no, the problem is you don’t seem to know what ‘the Adminstration’ is when you claimed you were part of it. I don’t actually know your job, dude. You said you were part of the Admininstration, I believed you. Maybe you were some low-level wonk who advised people who advised people who advised people, I don’t know.
Working in the civil service is not part of ‘the Administration’, at least not under any usage of it I’ve seen. You can’t be part of the Biden administration if your hiring or firing is completely disconnected from the President, which the civil service is by law. They are non-political positions.
And I specifically said who I had a problem with. It was Biden and his interaction with his cabinet…you know, the officials appointed to run agencies and advise him on policy, and my problem is his utter failure to get advice on an incredibly obvious upcoming and urgent problem until weeks after it happened.
This has literally nothing to do with the ‘egg administration’, and it’s completely absurd you think it is…or claim to think it is, because that’s a REALLY WEIRD thing to think, so weird I didn’t even think I needed to say ‘When I complained that Biden and his cabinet were not doing something about the repeal of Roe, I did not in fact mean that a random egg inspector should stop what they are doing and be involved in this. I understand that parts of the government exist independent of each other and I was, indeed, complaining about the part I specifically named, and not Gary, a random mailman’.Report
Hell, I’m not even complaining about _everyone_ who makes policy, which is, again, a baffling concept. My complaint was that _this executive order_ should have happened months ago, so the people I’m complaining about are the people addressed in the executive order, and not, for example, the Secretary of Transportation.
Actually, I’m not even complaining about them, I’m complaining Biden didn’t _ask_ them.Report
I mentioned back during the 2020 primary cycle that a lot of folks were getting very worked up on the Democratic side of the aisle about a nomination for a Presidency that was going to be overwhelmingly focused on trying to actually rebuild the administrative state after four years of Trump whipsawing every agency out there by governing via Tweet.
A lot of the angry responses about Biden taking too long about this or that aren’t really paying attention to how much of that sort of work is going on. I understand why people are angry, but they’re underrating how long it takes to fix bureaucracies when the leadership of them has, for four years, completely broken standards on everything from policy review to budgeting.Report
I’m pretty sure you’re wrong on that. The institutional framework of the civil service (laws, personnel, procedures) is all in place, and the political appointees have all been replaced. I get what you’re thinking, but it doesn’t really work that way. As for budgeting, it’s equal parts regimented and chaotic, but it’s been like that for decades.Report
Which agencies have been broken at this level? And how would these impact his ability to announce, if not implement, actual, meaningful policies on abortion?Report
… and did they just somehow get fixed?
When elected; “Our government lies in total shambles, it won’t be fixed until sometime early July next year!”
Early July next year:”Okay, we’ve worked 24/7 for over a year to repair this government, unable to accomplish anything else, and now what do we need to do? …oh hell, they just overturned Roe like two weeks ago, quick, someone issue an executive order about how we’re going to do something about this!”
… You know, I’m pretty sure the Biden administration has actually done things since the start of it.Report
Just so I don’t repeat myself, let’s ask our resident government employee. Philip, did anything change in the non-policy side of things with the change in administrations? And aren’t all the policy people new? So how could there have been any damage left by the last administration, beyond directives and interpretations that would have been changed anyway?Report