June 24, 2022 Roe v. Wade news

By Adrienne Vogt, Aditi Sangal, Elise Hammond, Meg Wagner and Veronica Rocha, CNN

Updated 8:19 a.m. ET, June 25, 2022
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1:02 p.m. ET, June 24, 2022

Biden: The Supreme Court ruling is "literally taking America back 150 years"

President Joe Biden speaks at the White House in Washington, on Friday, June 24, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
President Joe Biden speaks at the White House in Washington, on Friday, June 24, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

Friday's Supreme Court ruling that overturns Roe v. Wade is "literally taking America back 150 years," said President Biden.

"The court laid out state laws criminalizing abortion that go back to the 1800s as rationale — the court literally taking America back 150 years," Biden said Friday. "It's a sad day for the country, in my view."

Biden looked ahead to the elections in November and said voters must vote for representatives who will restore abortion rights.

"Let me be very clear and unambiguous. The only way we can secure a woman's right to choose ... is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade as federal law. No executive action from the President can do that," he said.

"And if Congress, as it appears, lacks the votes to do that now, voters need to make their voices heard. This fall, you must elect more senators and representatives who will codify a woman's right to choose into federal law once again," Biden added.

"This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality — they're all on the ballot. Until then, I will do all in my power to protect a woman's right in states where they will face the consequences of today's decision," he said in his address.

WATCH:

12:52 p.m. ET, June 24, 2022

Overturning Roe v. Wade puts "the health and life of women" at risk, Biden says

President Joe Biden speaks at the White House on Friday.
President Joe Biden speaks at the White House on Friday. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

President Biden said the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade marks a "sad day for the court and for the country."

"Today the Supreme Court of the United States expressly took away the Constitutional right from the American people that they already recognized. They didn't limit it. They simply took it away. That's never been done to a right so important to so many Americans, but they did it," Biden said.

Biden said with the Constitutional protection gone, "the health and life of women in this nation are now at risk."

The President said as the vice president and now as President, he has studied this case carefully to inform decisions about who to nominate to sit on the Supreme Court.

"I believe Roe v. Wade was the correct decision," he said.

12:52 p.m. ET, June 24, 2022

Biden says SCOTUS decision overturning Roe v. Wade is "a realization of an extreme ideology"

President Joe Biden speaks at the White House in Washington, on Friday, June 24, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
President Joe Biden speaks at the White House in Washington, on Friday, June 24, after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

President Biden, speaking after the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, placed the ruling on the three justices named by former President Trump, adding that "it's a realization of an extreme ideology."

"It was three justices named by one president, Donald Trump, who were the core of today's decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country. Make no mistake, this decision is a culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law," Biden said.  

"It's a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error of the Supreme Court in my view," he added.

"The court has done what it's never done before, expressly take away a constitutional right that is so fundamental to so many Americans that had already been recognized. The court's decision to do so will have real and immediate consequences," he said.  

12:39 p.m. ET, June 24, 2022

White House details action on call with stakeholders following Roe v. Wade ruling

From CNN's Betsy Klein

The White House joined a call following the Supreme Court's ruling on Roe v. Wade Friday with key stakeholders, a source familiar with the call tells CNN, previewing forthcoming announcements on administrative actions on women's reproductive health. 

The Biden administration is expected to make three announcements, the source said, made by President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Attorney General Merrick Garland. The administration will enforce protection for medication-induced abortion and the Department of Health and Human Services will increase access to those medications. Women will have the right to travel to other states for abortion care and the Department of Justice will protect them if they choose to do so. And the Justice Department will also protect providers to advise women on abortions.  

The President is also expected to call on Americans to elect candidates who support abortion rights and to call on Congress to codify the protections in Roe. 

Representatives from NARAL, Planned Parenthood and Emily's List were among those on the call. 

12:46 p.m. ET, June 24, 2022

"It's a sad day for the court and for the country": Biden delivers remarks on Roe v. Wade ruling

From CNN's Kate Sullivan

President Joe Biden speaks from the White House on Friday, June 24.
President Joe Biden speaks from the White House on Friday, June 24. (Pool)

President Biden is delivering remarks on the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, according to the White House.

"It's a sad day for the court and for the country," Biden said, speaking from the White House.

The White House has been bracing for the ruling from the nation's highest court, which was announced Friday morning, and has been planning next steps for months.

While there is little the President can do through executive action to fully mitigate the decision — and virtually nothing he can do to restore the nationwide right to an abortion — there are a number of steps Biden has been weighing in consultation with policy aides, political advisers and lawyers.

Some of the options the President has been considering include eliminating barriers to accessing medication abortion and challenging state laws that criminalize out-of-state travel to receive an abortion, CNN has reported. The President could also declare a public health emergency, which could shield doctors from legal liability if they treat patients in states where they are not licensed.

The President has also called for Congress to pass legislation codifying Roe v. Wade, but Democrats currently don't have the votes in the Senate to send such legislation to Biden's desk.

12:36 p.m. ET, June 24, 2022

Lead plaintiff in same-sex marriage case slams Thomas' calls for court to reconsider rulings

From CNN's Adam Levine

Jim Obergefell speaks outside the US Supreme Court in 2015.
Jim Obergefell speaks outside the US Supreme Court in 2015. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty Images)

Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the US Supreme Court case that legalized same-sex marriage, responded to Justice Clarence Thomas writing separately to call explicitly for the court to reconsider its rulings striking down state restrictions on contraceptives, state sodomy bans and state prohibitions on same-sex marriage.

"Clarence Thomas is a Supreme Court justice appointed by humans, he is not the Supreme Deity. The millions of loving couples who have the right to marriage equality to form their own families do not need Clarence Thomas imposing his individual twisted morality upon them. If you want to see an error in judgment, Clarence Thomas, look in the mirror," said Obergefell, also a candidate for the Ohio House, in a statement.

In their dissent, the liberal justices wrote “no one should be confident that this majority is done with its work.” 

“The right Roe and Casey recognized does not stand alone,” they wrote. “To the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other settled freedoms involving bodily integrity, familial relationships, and procreation. Most obviously, the right to terminate a pregnancy arose straight out of the right to purchase and use contraception. In turn, those rights led, more recently, to rights of same-sex intimacy and marriage.” 

Obergefell called the overturning of Roe v. Wade "a sad day" for women's rights.

"The reality is that women today will have less rights than their own mothers. We are going backwards and it’s both enraging and terrifying to see the excessive government overreach that this court is imposing on our country,” he said.

12:35 p.m. ET, June 24, 2022

GOP Sen. Collins says abortion decision by Kavanaugh and Gorsuch was "inconsistent"

From CNN's Ariane de Vogue and Daniella Diaz

Sen. Susan Collins attends a hearing on June 22, in Washington, DC.
Sen. Susan Collins attends a hearing on June 22, in Washington, DC. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images)

GOP Sen. Susan Collins said the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was "inconsistent" with what Justice Neil Gorsuch and Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in their testimonies and meetings with her.

“This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon," Collins said in a statement on Friday.

The Republican senator said the Justices indicated they believed in the importance of "supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon."

Collins said earlier this year she introduced legislation with GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski to "codify the abortion rights established by Roe v. Wade and affirmed by Planned Parenthood v. Casey." The statement said the bill would reinforce the importance of abortion protections.

“Our goal with this legislation is to do what the Court should have done — provide the consistency in our abortion laws that Americans have relied upon for 50 years," Collins said.

1:00 p.m. ET, June 24, 2022

Economists warn about the ill effects of the SCOTUS ruling on women's economic and societal position

From CNN's Ariane de Vogue

Abortion rights demonstrators hold signs outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on June 24.
Abortion rights demonstrators hold signs outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on June 24. (Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Liberal justices in their dissent of Friday's Supreme Court ruling said it will impact “countless life decisions,” including “whether and how to invest in education or careers, how to allocate financial resources and how to approach intimate family relationships.”

“Taking away the right to abortion, as the majority does today, destroys all those individual plans and expectations,” the dissent said and emphasized “in so doing, it diminishes women’s opportunities to participate fully and equally in the Nation’s political, social, and economic life.”  

The language of the dissent mirrored a “friend of the court brief” filed by economists that targeted the societal and economic effects abortion access has had on women over the last century.  

The economists pointed to studies that show that expansion of abortion access ushered in by Roe reduced teen motherhood by 34% and teen marriage by 20%.

“Studies also demonstrate that for women experiencing unintended pregnancies, access to abortion has increased the probability that they attend college and enter professional occupations,” they wrote.  

“There is a substantial body of well- developed and credible research that shows that abortion legalization and access in the United States has had—and continues to have—a significant effect on birth rates as well as broad downstream social and economic effects, including on women’s educational attainment and job opportunities,” they concluded.   

Mississippi and others, including Justice Amy Coney Barrett at oral arguments, had suggested that abortion access is no longer as relevant to women and their families in the modern day due to improvements in health care and adoption laws.  

12:23 p.m. ET, June 24, 2022

"Women will die": Chicago health care worker describes concern about illegal abortions

From CNN's Gregory Krieg

Ann Marie Staff, a 59-year-old registered nurse from outside Chicago, got news of the court’s decision on her walk from a New York City hotel to Washington Square Park.

Sitting on a park bench amid vendors, other tourists and students from nearby New York University, she quietly described the moment as “overwhelming.”

“Women will die,” she said. “I’ve been in women’s health forever. Many, many women died in backstreet abortions.”

Her partner, Staff said, was an OB-GYN before Roe v. Wade was decided in 1973 and “he told me multiple stories of death attributed to infection and things like that from trying to obtain an abortion.”

Staff said she expected women from neighboring states to begin traveling to Illinois to seek abortion procedures, but worried for those who could not afford the trip.

As she spoke, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker announced plans to call the state assembly into special season in the coming weeks to “more firmly protect women's reproductive rights in Illinois” and “address the challenges posed” by Roe’s reversal.

A Democrat, Staff seemed pessimistic that lawmakers in Washington would take act in response to the decision.

“I don’t know there’s a lot they can do,” she said. “But they need to pass legislation.”