US vice president Kamala Harris: Overturning Roe v Wade ‘has created a health care crisis in America’
Vice President Kamala Harris huddled with civil rights and reproductive justice groups in Washington, telling participants that the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade “has created a health care crisis in America.”
Vice President Kamala Harris huddled with civil rights and reproductive justice groups in Washington, telling participants that the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade “has created a health care crisis in America.”
Monday’s roundtable discussion is part of a series of meetings between the Biden administration is holding to plot a path forward as many states are impose new restrictions, even outright bans, following the high court’s decision several months ago in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case.
“”Every week, the abortion landscape changes,” said Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson.
Providers, hospitals, administrators, pharmacists have had to become lawyers in order to interpret what these bans mean for their patients,” she said.
In Washington, while Democratic President Joe Biden supports abortion, Democrats hold narrow majorities in the House and Senate – advantages that could be wiped out after the midterm elections in November.
Even if Democrats retain control of the U.S. Senate, they likely still would not have enough votes to stop Republicans from blocking abortion legislation.
Democrats in the House have already voted to pass a bill that would make abortion legal nationwide, but they have been unable to get the bill past an evenly divided Senate.
Abortion rights groups feel an urgency to act, especially with bans and restrictions in place in a majority of states.
Just three months after Roe v. Wade fell, abortion access in more than half of U.S. states is considered “restrictive,” according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.
That includes abortion bans in 11 states, two states where abortion is prohibited after six weeks of pregnancy and nine states that limit access in other ways.
“The (Dobbs) decision is out of step with global trends,” said Nancy Northrup of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which argued the case before the high court.
“We are standing virtually alone in regressing on abortion rights throughout the world,” she said.
About six in 10 U.S. adults say abortion should be legal in most cases, and abortion access is becoming increasingly important to voters, according to Pew Research Center.
