President Joe Biden‘s campaign is underscoring the importance of abortion access before the Supreme Court hears oral arguments Tuesday in a case to decide whether to restrict access to one of the two drugs required to terminate a pregnancy chemically.
Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez described the Supreme Court case, Food and Drug Administration v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, as “the biggest step” toward what she called former President Donald Trump‘s “ultimate goal” of a federal abortion ban since the court repealed precedent in Roe v. Wade in 2022. Trump has embraced a 15-week cutoff for terminating pregnancies after months of private speculation, a topic that upended down-ballot campaigns during the previous midterm elections and last year’s off-cycle contests.
“The impact would be disastrous, leaving millions of women unable to get the access to the reproductive healthcare they need,” Chavez Rodriguez told reporters during a phone call Monday.
“As Trump runs for a second term, he and his allies are telling us that they will go even further,” she said. “Over the last several months, Trump’s close advisers and allies have publicly released a comprehensive strategy to rip away access to reproductive healthcare, including banning medication abortion and restricting access to contraception, without the help of Congress. They have a literal blueprint to expand the chaos and cruelty he has already created nationwide, even in states where abortion remains legal.”
Alongside Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Reproductive Freedom for All President and CEO Mini Timmara, Chavez Rodriguez repeated that “these are the stakes in 2024” and that Biden and his campaign are “going to continue to make sure that every single voter knows that” before November’s general election.
With Trump now the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Biden and his aides have increasingly emphasized his plans for a second term as they try to draw a contrast between the incumbent and his predecessor amid the president’s low approval ratings.
“Donald Trump’s anti-abortion agenda is wildly unpopular, not just in blue states like Massachusetts, but in states like Kansas and Kentucky, where voters overwhelmingly voted to keep abortion legal,” Warren said. “Make no mistake: Abortion is on the ballot in 2024.”
Timmara added: “A 15-week abortion ban is still an abortion ban, and, as we showed in Virginia [in 2023], Americans hate abortion bans. … There’s no room for a, quote, ‘compromise position.’”
Attorneys for the plaintiffs, led by the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, will argue before the Supreme Court in person on Tuesday that the FDA did not properly approve the use of mifepristone for abortions under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and will ask for an injunction so it can be removed from the market. The drug is relied on for roughly half of all pregnancy terminations.
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In an earlier interview with the Washington Examiner, National Right to Life President Carol Tobias contended there were “good guidelines” concerning mifepristone that could be reintroduced for women’s “safety protection,” from week cutoffs to doctor consultations, particularly if there is an ectopic pregnancy.
“I really think and hope that the court will tell the FDA to go back to stronger protections,” Tobias said.
