Biden predicts states will try to arrest women who travel for abortions
By Jeff Mason and Rami Ayyub
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden predicted on Friday that some U.S. states will attempt to arrest girls for crossing state strains to get abortions after the Supreme Courtroom overturned the constitutional proper to the procedures nationwide.
13 Republican-led states banned or severely restricted the process beneath so-called “set off legal guidelines” after the courtroom struck down the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling final week. Ladies in these states looking for an abortion could must journey to states the place it stays authorized.
Convening a digital assembly on abortion rights with Democratic state governors on Friday, Biden mentioned he thinks “persons are gonna be shocked when the primary state … tries to arrest a lady for crossing a state line to get well being providers.”
He added: “And I do not assume individuals consider that is gonna occur. Nevertheless it’s gonna occur, and it is gonna telegraph to the entire nation that it is a gigantic deal that goes past; I imply, it impacts all of your primary rights”.
Biden mentioned the federal authorities will act to guard girls who must cross state strains to get an abortion and guarantee their entry to medicine in states the place it is banned.
New Mexico’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, advised the assembly her state “is not going to cooperate” on any makes an attempt to trace down girls who’ve had abortions to punish them. “We is not going to extradite,” she mentioned.
Abortion rights teams have filed laws in a number of states looking for to protect the power of girls to terminate pregnancies.
Judges in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Utah have since issued selections stopping these states from imposing new restrictive abortion legal guidelines, whereas Ohio’s prime courtroom on Friday declined to dam the Republican-led state from imposing an abortion ban. [L1N2YI1AD]
New York Governor Kathy Hochul advised the group that “only a handful of states” are going to must maintain well being of girls throughout the nation.
“There’s such stress on the market,” Hochul mentioned. “It’s a matter of life and demise for American girls,” she added.
Biden additionally advised the group there weren’t sufficient votes within the Senate to scrap a supermajority rule often known as the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade’s protections into legislation.
He had proposed that senators take away the filibuster however the suggestion was shot down by aides to key Democratic lawmakers.
“(The) filibuster mustn’t stand in the way in which of us having the ability to (codify Roe),” Biden mentioned.
(Reporting by Rami Ayyub, Jeff Mason and Susan HeaveyEditing by Alistair Bell)
