President Joe Biden met virtually with nine Democratic governors on Friday to discuss ways to preserve abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court‘s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision.
The governors represented the states of Colorado, Oregon, Connecticut, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Illinois, and Washington. All who spoke during the public portion of the meeting spoke of Dobbs as a tragic ruling that upended women’s rights in the United States.
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“We will work closely to protect women’s rights after this tragic reversal of Roe v. Wade,” Biden said at the meeting, where he spoke from the South Court Auditorium, located across the street from the White House. “I share the public outrage of this extremist court.”
Biden outlined what he’d already done since the ruling, allowing women to cross state lines to seek abortions and allowing abortion pills such as mifepristone to be mailed to states that have outlawed the procedure.
While lamenting the Dobbs decision, Biden called on Congress to pass a bill “codifying” Roe v. Wade and called on voters to elect two more Democratic senators this fall in order to change filibuster rules.
“The choice is clear: We either elect senators who will codify Roe … or legislators who will try to ban abortion nationwide,” he said. “This is going to go one way or another after November.”
After the Supreme Court overturned Roe last Friday, more than half of all states moved to limit abortion availability in some capacity. As of today, only 16 states explicitly guarantee abortion.
Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling, roughly 61% of voters believe abortion should be protected in “most cases,” according to a recent poll conducted by Pew Research Center, and Democratic Party leadership is working to make abortion a midterm voting issue.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said her state is working to add abortion rights to its constitution using a special session of the state legislature, predicting New York will become a “destination” for abortion procedures in the future. New York has approved $35 million to assist abortion providers in the state and will soon require health insurance companies to cover abortions as well.
“We also launched a public awareness campaign because there’s a lot of misinformation,” Hochul said. “Women in New York are seeing the national news. They don’t know whether their rights are protected here in New York. So we are going to continue being leaders in this fight. Protect providers — protect them from the vigilante justice which has been unleashed.”
A banner atop the screen where she was seen read “Protect women’s HEALTH, Protect women’s RIGHTS, Protect women’s PRIVACY.”
Hochul also asked Biden for additional executive action, noting he could open federal, military, and veterans hospitals for those in need of reproductive care. The White House has downplayed previous calls to perform abortions at national parks.
Biden said some state laws will prevent an 11-year-old who is a victim of incest from seeking an abortion.
“It’s a big deal [to] get people to vote,” the president said. “If [Democrats] don’t keep the Senate, we’ll be in the situation where the Republicans will pass a nationwide prohibition consistent with what the Supreme Court ruled. There’s a lot at stake here.”
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper said that as a Southern state with many neighbors blocking abortion, about 10,000 women are expected to cross state lines to seek abortions in his state within the next year.
“Your zip code should not determine your rights,” he said, before calling on Tar Heel State voters to elect more Democratic representatives and people in other states to elect more Democratic governors.
After New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham spoke, Biden closed the public portion of the meeting with a dire warning about the future.
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“People are going to be shocked when the first state tries to arrest a woman for crossing a state line to get health services,” he said. “I don’t think people believe that’s going to happen, but it’s going to happen, and it’s going to telegraph for the whole country that this is a gigantic deal. It affects all of your basic rights.”
