The Biden administration is firing again amid intensifying Republican-led efforts to legislate and implement a nationwide abortion ban at 15 weeks following the Supreme Court’s historic decision to overturn Roe v. Wade — the White House framing that push as a GOP effort to remove ladies’s rights.
After the Supreme Court overturned the landmark ladies’s reproductive well being invoice and upheld the Mississippi regulation banning abortion after 15 weeks, some House Republicans who oppose abortion rights are pushing laws to implement a nationwide abortion ban at 15 weeks.
Such laws doesn’t at the moment have the 60 votes wanted to beat a filibuster within the Senate, however the push for such a ban is a notable effort on condition that Republicans have a robust likelihood to take again management of the House on this 12 months’s midterms. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy expressed help for the thought on Friday, and former Vice President Mike Pence recommended the courtroom in an announcement and additionally lent his help to enacting a 15-week ban throughout the nation.
White House Gender Policy Council director Jen Klein lambasted such efforts Monday.
“Already Vice President Pence and GOP Leader McCarthy have announced their support for a nationwide ban on abortion, passed by Congress. No woman in any state – no matter how pro-choice that state – would have the right to choose. Abortion would be illegal everywhere. The ultra-MAGA agenda on choice has never been about ‘states’ rights.’ This has always been about taking away women’s rights, in every single state,” Klein mentioned in an announcement offered solely to CNN.
As President Joe Biden and different high officers have known as on Americans to make their voices heard on the poll field in November, Klein framed the selection in stark phrases, providing a preview of White House messaging on the matter.
“So let’s be clear, this goes one of two ways: We either have a House and Senate that puts Roe into federal law or a House and Senate that push ultra-MAGA policies that strip women of their rights in all 50 states. Congress will either protect women everywhere or strip away their rights everywhere,” she mentioned.
Klein has been among the many White House officers main the White House response to the Supreme Court ruling, forming an interagency working group and shaping the administration’s outreach to key stakeholder teams. While Biden is touring overseas to key summits this week, Klein will probably be amongst high administration officers’ efforts to talk publicly within the aftermath of the ruling this week.
The sharpened language comes as Biden has begun drawing contrasts in his midterm messaging, going after the “ultra-MAGA agenda” of the precise in comparison with his insurance policies. The President has outlined steps his administration is taking on the federal stage because the White House continues to subject stress from Democrats to do extra.
“This decision must not be the final word,” Biden mentioned in remarks from the lobby of the White House Friday. “My administration will use all of its appropriate lawful powers. Congress must act. And your vote? You can have the final word. This is not over.”
The steps he specified by his remarks — increasing entry to remedy abortion and making certain ladies are capable of cross state strains to acquire abortions — had been a main focus of his workforce after dozens of conversations with abortion rights advocates and consultants over the previous two months.
CNN’s Melanie Zanona, Manu Raju, and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.
