Biden Administration Considers Declaring a Public Health Emergency on Abortion

Xavier Becerra, secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), speaks during a press conference at the HHS headquarters in Washington, on June 28, 2022. Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images

The Biden administration is considering the possibility of declaring a health emergency due to the lack of abortion access in some states.

Health and Human Services (HSS) Secretary Xavier Becerra told Axios on Jan. 30 that there have been “discussions” about how best to protect abortion rights, including the possibility of an emergency declaration.

“There are certain criteria that you look for to be able to declare a public health emergency. That’s typically done by scientists and those that are professionals in those fields who will tell us whether we are in a state of emergency and based on that, I have the ability to make a declaration,” Becerra said.

Becerra said there has yet to be a “full assessment” of what such a declaration would look like and whether it’s warranted, but his department is currently looking into the possibility.

“We are constantly exploring additional actions we can take to protect and expand access to reproductive health care, including abortion care, and are prioritizing the actions that can give us the highest impact and most durable solutions,” an HHS spokesperson told Axios.

Roe Versus Wade

The Supreme Court revoked federal protections for abortion access when they overturned Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022 with their decision on the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Since that time, individual states have been deciding what abortion access should be made available, and the Biden administration has pushed for expanded access in states that have introduced restrictions.

In July 2022, Biden issued an executive order that directed Becerra to “take additional action to protect and expand access to abortion care, including access to medication that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved as safe and effective over twenty years ago.”

Pro-life and pro-abortion rights activists protest during the 50th annual March for Life rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on Jan. 20, 2023. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Shortly after that order was made, more than 80 House Democrats sent a letter to Biden and Becerra asking them to declare an emergency or move to ban the restrictions in some states. This came after the president said, at the time, that an emergency declaration wasn’t a “great option.”

The Wall Street Journal reported in January that the administration has moved to reduce regulatory standards allowing abortion pills that were previously only available through a few mail-order pharmacies to be sold in brick-and-mortar pharmacies. A group of almost 80 lawmakers sent a letter to the Commissioner of the FDA expressing their “profound opposition” to the new standards for the distribution of the chemical abortion drug.

Following that change, the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a 113-page lawsuit on Nov. 18, 2022, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Amarillo on behalf of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine and a number of other organizations and individuals, claiming that the FDA failed to properly approve mifepristone for the purpose of terminating pregnancies.

The lawsuit seeks a preliminary injunction prohibiting the prescription of “mifepristone and misoprostol as FDA-approved chemical abortion drugs” while the legal challenge is resolved, which might happen this spring, as The Epoch Times previously reported.

That decision also prompted the attorneys general from 22 states to call on the FDA to reverse a rule change allowing for remote prescriptions of abortion-inducing pills through the mail. In the Jan. 13 letter, the attorneys general criticized the FDA saying the agency’s decision to “abandon commonsense restrictions on remotely prescribing and administering abortion-inducing drugs is both illegal and dangerous.”

HHS didn’t immediately respond to The Epoch Times’s request for comment.