While speaking on the 51st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, President Joe Biden slammed GOP efforts to further restrict abortion in the U.S. after the Supreme Court overruled the landmark decision in 2022:
“Some doctors … they’re fleeing their home states because the laws that would send them to prison for providing evidence-based health care. In states like Texas, doctors can get a life sentence — a life sentence — for providing the care they were trained to provide. It’s outrageous. It’s simply outrageous. And frankly, this is just the beginning. My congressional Republican friends are going even further. Further extremes … threatening the lives of women. Three different Republican members of the United States Congress have proposed three different additional national bans to criminalize health care in every state. Let me tell you what they are. One is a zero-week ban with absolutely no exceptions. A zero-week ban with absolutely no exceptions. The second is a six-week ban. The penalty for violating it is jail. The third is a 15-week ban. The penalty is a five-year prison sentence. That means even if you live in a state where the extremist Republicans are not running the show, your right to choose, your right to privacy would still be at risk if this law were passed, if any of these were passed nationally. And the extreme right is trying to limit all women in America from getting safe and effective medication approved by the Federal Drug Administration over 20 years ago, based on the FDA’s independent expert judgment. They’re trying to block women from getting this medication, even in states where abortion is legal. And on top of all of that, if you live in a state where you cannot get this care you need and you make a plan to travel into a state where you can get the medicine, Republican officials are trying to stop that as well.”
