Roe v. Wade: US President Joe Biden vows to protect women travelling for abortions

Roe v. Wade: US President Joe Biden vows to protect women travelling for abortions

Abortion rights groups have filed legislation in multiple states seeking to preserve the ability of women to terminate pregnancies.

US President Joe Biden has assured that the federal government would provide protection to the women travelling abortions as he predicted that some US states might take severe action to enforce a total ban on the procedure.

Thirteen Republican-ruled states have banned or severely restricted abortions under the so-called "trigger laws" after the Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling last week. It has forced women in those states seeking an abortion to look to travel to other states where it remains legal.

Convening a virtual meeting on abortion rights with Democratic state governors on Friday, Biden said he thinks "people are going to be shocked when the first state ... tries to arrest a woman for crossing a state line to get health services."

“And I don't think people believe that's going to happen. But it's going to happen, and it's going to telegraph to the whole country that this is a gigantic deal that goes beyond; I mean, it affects all your basic rights,” he added.

The president added that the government would ensure access to pills that caused abortion in states where it was prohibited and protect those women who need to travel for the procedure.

Abortion rights groups have filed legislation in multiple states seeking to preserve the ability of women to terminate pregnancies.

Judges in Florida, Louisiana, Texas and Utah have since issued decisions preventing those states from enforcing new restrictive abortion laws, while Ohio's top court on Friday declined to block the Republican-led state from enforcing an abortion ban.

Moreover, several companies like Amazon, Meta, Starbucks, JP Morgan have offered to pay for employees to travel to another state to obtain a legal abortion.

Roe v. Wade: US President Joe Biden vows to protect women travelling for abortions
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Biden also told the group there were not enough votes in the Senate to scrap a supermajority rule known as the filibuster to codify Roe v. Wade's protections into law, reports Reuters.

He had proposed that senators remove the filibuster but the suggestion was shot down by aides to key Democratic lawmakers.

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