President Joe Biden sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s decision Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade and end national abortion rights in the United States, saying it put the country on a “extreme and dangerous path.”
“Today, the Supreme Court expressly took away a constitutional right from the American people that it had already recognized,” said Biden, who chaired the Judiciary Committee as a senator from Delaware and is a longtime supporter of abortion rights. “It didn’t limit it. They simply took it away. That’s never been done to a right so important to so many Americans.”
Biden noted the decision, written by Justice Samuel Alito, pointed to state laws criminalizing abortion from the 1800s.
“The court is literally taking America back 150 years,” he said.
The ruling flies in the face of popular opinion and ends the five-decade-old precedent protecting abortion rights. Abortion is now expected to become illegal in roughly half of the 50 states.
“This fall, Roe is on the ballot,” Biden said. “Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality – they’re all on the ballot.”
The president also pledged to protect women who travel to other states to obtain abortions, and said he was directing the Department of Health and Human Services to make abortion pills “are available to the fullest extent possible.”
Biden also raised alarm about other rulings based on a constitutional right to privacy, including ones protecting gay marriage, gay sex and access to contraception.