President Joe Biden signed an executive order that aims to provide abortions funded by American taxpayers.
The order “paves the way for Medicaid to pay for abortions for women having to travel out of state,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during the daily briefing.
It will allow Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to consider proceeding along "access to reproductive healthcare services, including through Medicaid for patients who travel out of state for reproductive healthcare services.”
“Secretary Becerra will invite states to apply for Medicaid waivers to allow them to provide reproductive health care to women who live in states where abortions are banned,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that the waivers will pay for the actual procedures.
However she admitted to not fully understanding the details of the order, leaving many questions unanswered.
“So it's the Medicaid waiver, from what I understand – it is for them to pay for abortion procedure… And I don't have the specifics on the travel. We can easily go back, but from what I understand, Medicaid pays for your health care services. So I presume it is for the health care,” she told reporters.
"So this is going to be in their purview,” Jean-Pierre said, adding that the Biden administration is going to leave it up to the HHS to hash out the details about how it will work with individual states if they ask for a waiver and how that will play out in practice.
Biden has yet to back off his criticism of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, doing everything in his power to “protect” Americans' so-called "right” to abortion that was invented by the Supreme Court and invalidated for its flawed legal basis by this summer's Dobbs opinion.
“Today, I'm signing the second executive order that responds to the healthcare crisis that has unfolded since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, and that women are facing all across America,” Biden said while signing the order.
He boldly claimed that the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision “practically dared women in this country go to the ballot box and restore the right to choose that the Court just ripped away after 50 years.”
Meanwhile, Jean-Pierre was grilled on why Biden, a so-called Catholic, wants to force taxpaying Catholics to subsidize abortions.
“Federal law makes clear doctors must provide women emergency medical care, including abortion services, to stabilize women facing life-threatening conditions… We are working to ensure that pregnant women whose life and lives are in serious jeopardy receive the care that they need,” Jean-Pierre responded to Owen Jensen, a reporter for a Catholic news network. Never mind, apparently, the fact that doctors in states with pro-life laws are not prohibited from providing life-saving care.
"But under that same federal law, there are exceptions for moral … or religious objections to provide particular medical services. So nothing in today's EO impacts those exceptions,” Jean-Pierre acknowledged.