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Flashback: Here's What Joe Biden Said About Roe v. Wade When He Was a Senator

Madeline Leesman
Madeline Leesman  |  July 01, 2024 10:00 AM

During the presidential debate on Thursday, President Joe Biden claimed (multiple times) that he supports abortion protections that were instilled by Roe v. Wade. If reelected, Biden said that he would “restore” Roe, which allows for abortions in all stages of pregnancy.

Former President Donald Trump, on the other hand, pointed out that people on both sides of the aisle thought that Roe was wrongly decided and that the issue of abortion belonged to the states. Biden disagreed with the sentiment. He also went on a tangent saying that we need abortion because “there’s a lot of women being raped by their brothers and sisters.”

However, in August 1986, Sen. Biden had a very different take about the Roe decision. 

“There is an overwhelming, universal criticism by proponents of pro-choice and opponents of pro-choice that Roe v. Wade wasn't very well-reasoned. Most constitutional scholars do not offer that as an example of whether they’re for or against abortion, a decision that is well-written and well-reasoned, not the conclusion..It’s not offered as a way to write a decision,” Biden said. 

Biden’s remarks were made during day two of Antonin Scalia’s confirmation hearing to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court.

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In 2019, the New York Times reported that Biden had a “changing record” on abortion and specifically, Roe. In 1981, Biden supported a piece of legislation that would create a constitutional amendment allowing individual states to overturn Roe. He flip-flopped on the issue a year later.

Previously, when Biden entered the Senate, he claimed that the Supreme Court went “too far” on abortion rights in Roe (via NYT):

He told an interviewer the following year that a woman shouldn’t have the “sole right to say what should happen to her body.” By the time he left the vice president’s mansion in early 2017, he was a 74-year-old who argued a far different view: that government doesn’t have “a right to tell other people that women, they can’t control their body,” as he put it in 2012.

Now, the Biden administration pushes for extreme late-term abortions and uses women who undergo these abortions as props to promote this agenda. 

In the debate, when Dana Bash asked Biden specifically if he would support any restrictions on abortion, he avoided stating that he believes in abortion at all stages by simply stating that he supports Roe. When Trump pointed out that Roe is extreme, Biden claimed, “We are not for late term abortion. Period. Period. Period."

Trump noted that former Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) pushed for late-term abortions and even infanticide after the baby is born.