Several hours after the U.S. Supreme Court officially released its decision in Dobbs v. Jackson to overturn Roe v. Wade, President Joe Biden took to the podium to make official remarks.
"Today, is, uh, it's not hyperbole to suggest a very somber moment," Biden began, as he claimed that "today the Supreme Court of the United States expressly took away a constitutional right from the American people that it had already recognized." He continued to double down on his disappointment, calling it "a sad day for the Court and for the country."
"This landmark case," Biden said, "protected a woman's right to choose, her right to make intensely personal decisions with her doctor, free from interference of politics. It reaffirmed basic principles of equality, that women have the power to control their own destiny, and it reinforced a fundamental right of privacy."
As Biden touted his prior role as the Senate Judiciary Chairman, a role in which he oversaw Supreme Court nominations, he claimed that he had "studied this case carefully" and that Roe "was the correct decision, as a matter of constitutional law and application of the fundamental right to privacy and liberty and matters of family and personal autonomy."
Many legal scholars, however, including those who support abortion, such as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, have acknowledged that Roe was wrongly decided. A particular criticism of the decision is that it was an example of judicial activism, as it imposed legal abortion nationwide across all 50 states.
Curt Levey, a constitutional law attorney and the president of the Committee for Justice, went in-depth, highlighting as much for his statement on the Dobbs decision.
Further, the president is hiding from his own pro-life past, which became a major talking point in 2019, when Biden was running in a crowded Democratic presidential primary. On March 29, 2019, Lisa Lerer wrote a piece for The New York Times highlighting "When Joe Biden Voted to Let States Overturn Roe v. Wade."
As Lerer wrote:
Mr. Biden entered the Senate in 1973 as a 30-year-old practicing Catholic who soon concluded that the Supreme Court went “too far” on abortion rights in the Roe case. 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.
As he discussed Roe further, Biden misled on its scope, despite being someone who claims to be so well-versed in it. He claimed, "Roe was a decision on a complex matter, through a careful balance between a woman's right to choose earlier in her pregnancy and a state's ability to regulate later in her pregnancy."
The president failed to mention that thanks to Roe's companion case of Doe v. Bolton, abortion was legalized throughout all nine months of pregnancy. This was due to what the Court acknowledged as broadly-defined "health" exceptions, including the "well-being" of the mother, which could be whatever she and her doctor decided it was.
As Biden laid out the history of how it took the Court to get to overturning Roe, he slammed his predecessor, former President Donald Trump, for appointing the three justices who voted in the majority, reminding the country how instrumental Trump's role in nominating justices was. Because it was a majority decision, though, justices nominated by Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush were also instrumental in this outcome, including Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the opinion.
The president went on to discuss the political ramifications, even admitting that he cannot restore Roe by executive order, though he is looking to protect abortion via executive order in other ways. He thus called, once more, for Congress to pass the Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA), which will actually expand Roe. While it passed the House last September, it has failed twice in the Senate, thanks to the filibuster and opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) as well as Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Susan Collins (R-ME), despite their support for Roe.
Biden acknowledged that the bill failed in the Senate, and used it to call for voters to elect pro-abortion politicians in the coming November midterm elections, now just a little over four months. "Voters need to make their voices heard," he declared. "This fall, [they] must elect more senators and representatives who codify a woman's right to choose into federal law once again, elect more state leaders to protect this right at the local level." Biden further misled on how pro-abortion Democrats look to merely "restore the protections of Roe as law of the land" when they will actually expand it by getting rid of state pro-life protections.
"This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality, they are all on the ballot," Biden declared in an attempt to rally the base.
Polls released since the draft opinion leaked last month consistently show that voters are more motivated by economic issues, such as inflation, which does not bode well for the president and his party. Historically speaking, the president's party almost always loses seats in Congress during the first midterm election, but Biden's historically low poll numbers, the Democrat's narrow majorities, and a high amount of Democratic retirements further suggest a red wave.
While at the annual National Right to Life Committee (NRLC) convention on Friday, Townhall spoke to Karen Cross, the organization's political director, about the president's remarks, which she pointed out were "so loaded."
She emphasized the danger of the WHPA and how unpopular its provisions are, as well as how "so out of the mainstream" the Democratic Party's support for abortion throughout all nine months without legal limit and with taxpayer funds is.
Cross also believes this will not be a winning issue for Democrats come November, especially since it's a distraction from Biden's failures. "I almost feel like what he's doing is trying to point the other direction and say, 'Don't mind all the failures I've had in the first two years I've been here,'" emphasizing Biden has been "a complete failure at everything."
She offered the example of how former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA) was unable to make abortion a winning issue when he ran against Glenn Youngkin last year in Virginia, where Biden won by 10 points. McAuliffe ultimately lost to Youngkin.
Another misleading claim that the president made was to repeat pro-abortion talking points, made ever since the Dobbs decision was leaked, which is to claim that "this decision risks the broader right to privacy for everyone," as he went on to warn the Court could also take away the rights to same-sex and interracial marriages as well as contraception. As a way to double down on his support for Roe, he claimed that "Roe recognized the fundamental right to privacy that has served for the basis for so many more rights that have come to take, we've come to take for granted, that are ingrained in the fabric of this country."
To gin up concern, Biden said, "This is an extreme and dangerous path the Court has now taken us on."
The president cited the concurring opinion from Justice Clarence Thomas to claim as much. It's worth stressing that this was a concurring opinion from a justice who wrote that "in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents."
The official opinion of the Court, written by Justice Alito, wrote, "None of the other decisions cited by Roe and Casey involved the critical moral question posed by abortion. Accordingly, those cases do not support the right to obtain an abortion, and the Court's conclusion that the Constitution does not confer such a right does not undermine them in any way."
Further, in his own concurring opinion, Justice Thomas wrote, "Thus, I agree that [n]othing in [the Court's] opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion."
Biden closed his remarks by finally emphasizing "peaceful, peaceful, peaceful" protests with "no intimidation," as intimidation and violence are "not speech."
Biden finally calls for "no intimidation" or "violence" from protestors in the wake of SCOTUS' decision to overturn Roe v Wade. pic.twitter.com/bNAtCmpTid
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 24, 2022
The White House and the Democratic Party have been heavily criticized for a failure to appropriately condemn such reactions from those who have targeted pro-life organizations, pregnancy centers and churches with vandalism and even violence. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has even been the target of an alleged assassination plot. President Biden had yet to directly address and call out such violence until Friday afternoon.
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