Abortion Rights
Summary: Abortion care is a fundamental right. We all must be able to control our own bodily autonomy in order to have true equality in our democracy and society.
Immediately codify Roe (reproductive rights), Obergfell (gay marriage), Loving (right to interaccial marriage), and Griswold (right to contraception) into federal law.
The Department of Justice must protect access to medication abortion.
The FDA must extend the approved use period for medication abortion from ten weeks to twelve.
FDA should allow any licensed doctor or pharmacy to prescribe and dispense abortion pills.
The Biden administration must declare abortion access a public health emergency.
The federal government should use federal land to expand abortion access by allowing abortion providers to open brick-and-mortar or mobile clinics.
We must expand access to telemedicine abortion.
We must increase Title X funding to support Planned Parenthood and other family planning centers and the patients who depend on them for access to contraception and comprehensive reproductive healthcare.
The Department of Transportation should offer free or discounted bus fares for patients who now need to travel out of state to get care.
Because some patients will be forced to make lengthy cross-state trips to access abortion, it is all the more important that Congress pass guaranteed paid sick leave and universal childcare.
Reproductive rights are fundamental human rights. Affordable and accessible reproductive healthcare – including abortion care – is essential: we all must be able to control our own bodily autonomy in order to have true equality in our democracy and society.
Women’s fundamental human rights are under attack. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade severely threatens the lives and livelihoods of women and pregnant people. We cannot let this Court decimate by fiat the rights of women and pregnant people to control their own bodies and futures.
Roe v. Wade was the law of the land for more than forty years after being decided by a bipartisan coalition of justices, and was repeatedly reaffirmed by justices appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents alike. As constitutional law scholars have explained, a person’s right to decide whether or not to continue a pregnancy is well grounded in the Constitution’s protections for individual liberty. And as historians have demonstrated, abortion has been permitted throughout American history since the country’s founding.
Put simply, overturning Roe is a radical act of right-wing judicial activism, jeopardizing reproductive healthcare for millions of women and pregnant people. The Federalist Society and the conservative legal movement have been hellbent on overturning Roe since the day it was decided, and have spent years laying the groundwork for this moment. Donald Trump promised his Supreme Court justices would overturn Roe, so the state of Mississippi enacted a law that would give Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, and the Court’s other conservatives the opportunity to do just that.
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade is disastrous for the health and autonomy of countless Americans. It has drastically deepened the divide within our country, created a stark patchwork of states that outlaw abortion entirely, and those like New York that recognize that abortion is essential healthcare. This is especially harmful to those least able to travel long distances to get care, including young people, people with disabilities, low-income people and hourly workers, and people of color.
While this extremist Supreme Court bears the direct blame for the disastrous fallout from its decision, it also marks a colossal failure by our elected leaders. Members of Congress have failed for decades to take meaningful steps to protect and expand abortion access, even though Roe has been under siege by hostile state lawmakers for years. They have failed to take power out of the Supreme Court’s hands by passing legislation guaranteeing the right to abortion, even as the Court became increasingly stacked with conservatives eager to yank that right away.
We need a new generation of leaders who will lead in protecting the right to abortion and reining in an out-of-control Supreme Court. In Congress, I would work to pass legislation like the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would secure a federal right to abortion regardless of what the Supreme Court thinks. I would support the Equal Access to Abortion Coverage in Health Insurance Act, which would repeal the Hyde Amendment and end the discriminatory treatment of low-income Medicaid patients who are currently forced to pay out of pocket for essential reproductive healthcare. And I would support the Judiciary Act and other efforts to reform the Supreme Court to restore its legitimacy, including adding new justices in recognition that Mitch McConnell stole a seat from Merrick Garland, and that five sitting justices – a majority of the Court – were appointed by presidents who took office despite losing the popular vote.
These are critical long-term measures for protecting our fundamental rights, but we need swift action out of Washington now. There is no quick fix for the damage the Supreme Court has inflicted. But there are steps we can take to mitigate some of that damage:
The Department of Justice must protect access to medication abortion. It is a basic tenet of our constitutional system that states cannot pass laws in conflict with federal law. But many states have flouted FDA regulations to restrict access to safe and legal medication abortion. The federal government must defend its supremacy and access to approved medicine by challenging these unlawful state actions in court.
The FDA must extend the approved use period for medication abortion from ten weeks to twelve, consistent with the global standard. Many women do not realize they are pregnant until six or eight weeks. Having an extra two weeks to use abortion pills can make all the difference for some women in the post-Roe world.
FDA should allow any licensed doctor or pharmacy to prescribe and dispense abortion pills.
The Biden administration must declare abortion access a public health emergency, this will invoke emergency legal protections that allow doctors to freely prescribe abortion pills across state lines without fear of prosecution or sanctions.
In states that prohibit abortion, the federal government should use federal land to expand abortion access by allowing abortion providers to open brick-and-mortar or mobile clinics.
We must expand access to telemedicine abortion. Telemedicine abortion care is a safe and effective way for doctors to treat patients in the comfort of their own homes. We must close the digital divide so more patients have the technology needed to access telemedicine care. And we should make it easier for doctors to see patients virtually across state lines, and to prescribe them medicine.
We must increase Title X funding to support Planned Parenthood and other family planning centers and the patients who depend on them for access to contraception and comprehensive reproductive healthcare.
The Department of Transportation should offer free or discounted bus fares for patients who now need to travel out of state to get care.
Because some patients will be forced to make lengthy cross-state trips to access abortion, it is all the more important that Congress pass guaranteed paid sick leave and universal childcare. It will be hard enough for people to undertake a long journey to exercise their fundamental right to abortion – but it is made harder still for those who lack protected time off from work or who lack a safe place for their children to go during the day.
Roe is a basic American principle embedded in our Constitution that there are core personal areas of our lives that ought to be free from government intrusion. By revoking the right to abortion, the Supreme Court is affecting all of us by shrinking our liberty, and by greenlighting government to intervene into personal choices around our autonomy and our lives.
A fair and impartial Supreme Court would stand by decades of precedent and common-sense principles that abortion access is essential for personal dignity and freedom. But we shouldn’t have to pin our hopes on the Court. I will be a leader in Congress working to expand access to essential reproductive healthcare, because that care is too important to leave up to an unelected and unaccountable Court stacked with right-wing justices.