The Biden administration reportedly is considering using executive orders to protect women whose right to abortion may soon be eliminated in Republican states like Missouri, if and when the U.S. Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade. Presidential over-use of these unilateral orders has long been a legitimate concern, but if ever an issue cried out for this kind of intervention, it’s this one. Most Americans continue to support some level of abortion rights, but are close to being overruled by a radical political minority.
The draft Supreme Court opinion that leaked in early May indicates the court’s conservatives will soon eliminate the constitutional right to abortion that has protected women for almost 50 years. In Missouri and other red states, laws are already in place that will automatically go into effect with Roe’s demise, outlawing abortion from the moment of conception in almost all cases and returning women to the second-class-citizen status they endured pre-Roe.
The best solution to this coming dystopia would be a federal law setting minimum abortion rights nationwide. But that’s a political impossibility even in a Democrat-controlled Senate, because of the filibuster. Biden couldn’t do that by executive order, but there are safety-net policies he might be able to create that could at least mitigate the worst injustices that some legislative extremists in Missouri and elsewhere are anxious to impose on women.
