Biden Considers Declaring a National Health Emergency. Here’s Why.

Biden Considers Declaring a National Health Emergency in Response to Abortion Ruling

President Joe Biden asked administration officials to investigate if he has authority to declare a national health emergency over abortion access.

The administration is being pushed by progressives in his party to find a path to restoring abortion access that the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional. Justices ruled 5-4 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. The Court’s June 24 opinion said the decision about allowing abortions was something that each state’s legislature would need to decide because it was outside the scope of the Court.

Democrats immediately began acting out, staging loud protests outside the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., and in various state capitals.

Soon protestors began converging in front of homes belonging to the justices. They marched and yelled, often using bullhorns and noisemakers to raise the decibel level on the sleepy suburban streets where they raise their children.

One protester was so incensed with the Court he flew from California to Maryland with a gun and a plan to murder Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Only the presence of armed U.S. Marshals outside Kavanaugh’s Maryland home stopped the would-be assassin.

A group of protesters hounded Justice Kavanaugh and his dinner party at a downtown D.C. branch of Morton’s The Steakhouse Wednesday evening.

It appears pro-life opponents are working through the denial and anger stages of grief and may be moving on to bargaining with talk of declaring emergencies. Once they process that grief stage, they only have depression to get through before they reach acceptance.

The executive branch of government does not have the power to restore abortion access now that the Supreme Court overturned its 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade. The president acknowledged that Sunday.

“I don’t have the authority to say that we’re going to reinstate Roe v. Wade as the law of the land,” Biden told reporters in Delaware. The president has said he believes only Congress can restore federal abortion access after the recent ruling.

That has not stopped angry pro-choice advocates from trying to find work-arounds to bypass the high Court’s knockout punch. Declaring a national health emergency would be a rebuke of the Court’s authority, which the administration should be leery of.

Displaying contempt for the Supreme Court by trying to restore abortion access with a declaration of a national health emergency is bad policy. It also would probably not accomplish much for the administration.

“When we looked at the public health emergency, we learned a couple things,” White House official Jen Klein explained to reporters Friday.

“One is that it doesn’t free very many resources,” Klein said. “It’s what’s in the public health emergency fund, and there’s very little money—tens of thousands of dollars in it. So that didn’t seem like a great option. And it also doesn’t release a significant amount of legal authority.”

She noted that is why the Biden administration has not taken that action yet.