WASHINGTON: A year after US Supreme Court scrapped the constitutional right to abortion in the United States, President Joe Biden on Saturday vowed to fight against the “extreme and dangerous” effort by Republicans to curb access to the procedure nationwide.

The high court’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision passed the regulation of abortion back to individual states — some of which have since moved to drastically restrict the procedure.

“State bans are just the beginning,” Biden said in a statement on the anniversary of the ruling. “Their agenda is extreme, dangerous, and out-of-step with the vast majority of Americans.”

Some 20 states, mostly in the South and Midwest, have prohibited abortion outright or severely restricted access while others, mainly on the coasts, have moved to protect it.

The closure of abortion clinics in about a dozen states has forced tens of thousands of women to travel elsewhere to terminate a pregnancy. Biden warned that Republicans were working to enact a nationwide abortion ban.

“Congressional Republicans want to ban abortion nationwide, but go beyond that, by taking FDA-approved medication for terminating a pregnancy, off the market, and make it harder to obtain contraception,” the president said, referring to the Food and Drug Administration.

With a divided US Congress, there is little the president can do. Still, Biden said he would push for federal-level protections.

“My Administration will continue to protect access to reproductive health care and call on Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law once and for all,” he said.

Abortion rights proved a key issue for Democrats in the 2022 midterm elections, and are likely to be just as important in the 2024 presidential race. They’ve also become an animating feature in Republican campaigns.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2023