Biden targets 'extremist Republicans' on anniversary of Roe v Wade decision

President Joe Biden and his VP Kamala Harris are making abortion a center point of their campaign. As part of their effort to enable the continued mass termination of pregnancies across the US, Biden took aim at "extreme Republicans" who have proposed or implemented laws that prevent babies from being aborted after certain limits. Biden claimed that laws against abortion mean that the "right to privacy is under attack."

In so doing, he used the terms that have frequently been part of the Democrat conversation on abortion, focusing on the woman who is pregnant, not referring to her as a mother, and discussing her "right to choose" whether or not she will carry the child conceived in her body to term. 

Biden claimed that the right to an abortion is "founded on the idea of freedom" and cited the most rare cases of abortion, those that are medically necessary to save the mother's life. While some states have limited abortion, others, like Oregon, have absolutely no limits and babies can be aborted throughout the entire 9 months of pregnancy.

According to Guttmacher, there were 930,000 abortions in 2020, the last year for which they collected data. Per the CDC, 39 percent of all abortions in the US are performed on black mothers, which is the highest percentage per racial group. White mothers make up 33 percent of abortions performed in US.

"That cruel reality," Biden continued, "has resulted in extreme Republicans who for years have made it their mission to end Roe v Wade decision. Since Roe was overturned and 21 states abortion bans are now in effect." Biden routinely claims that Republicans who disagree with him on abortion, trans, and other issues like the Ukraine war are "extreme."

He spoke against the bans on pregnancy termination in some states, from the absolute ban on abortion, to the 6-week ban, to a 15-week ban. He said "your right to choose and your right to privacy" would be at risk if these bans took effect at the federal level. "The extreme right is trying to limit all women in America," he said.

Instead, he has proposed that Congress pass a federal law that allows abortion with no limits and no exceptions. The phrasing of the current proposal offers a limit unless the health of the mother is at risk, which includes mental health. Biden also pushed for chemical abortions to be more widely available.

Biden made these remarks on the 51st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, which was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022 with the Dobbs decision, returning determinations on the legality of abortion back to the states. Harris has launched a Reproductive Rights Tour to spread her message of the urgency of a federal law permitting pregnancy termination regardless of states' rights to the whole country.