Led by Congressmen Elizabeth Warren and Mazie Hirono, lawmakers recommended 11 new regulations President Joe Biden’s administration can take to protect reproductive freedom.
The signatories stressed the importance of issuing guidelines detailing the right of American women to travel across state lines for voluntary termination of pregnancy.
They also advocated strengthening healthcare privacy laws to ensure provider and patient data cannot be shared with law enforcement, as well as repealing former Executive Orders (2017-2021) from President Donald Trump’s time that restrict the process.
The senators also urged the government to “use all the legal and regulatory tools at its disposal” to ensure continued access to mifepristone, an abortion pill, before a court proceeding that could keep this drug off the market.
“Every day, women’s lives are threatened because they are denied access to basic health care. We urge you to continue to use the federal government’s resources to organize an aggressive response to this crisis,” the senators said in the letter, quoted by The Hill newspaper.
The letter also bore the signatures of Tina Smith, Edward Markey, Alex Padilla, Cory Booker, Jeff Merkley, Richard Blumenthal, Tammy Duckworth, Tammy Baldwin, Sherrod Brown and Jeanne Shaheen.
The text was released amid fears that a Texas federal judge would soon issue a ruling that would block access to the pill, legal since 2000 and used in pharmacological abortions.
Roe v. Wade was the 1973 trial in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protects a woman’s freedom to choose and terminate her pregnancy without undue government restrictions.
As a result of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization trial (which challenged a Mississippi statute that bans abortions after 15 weeks even in cases of rape), the court ruled last June that the Magna Carta did not provide for the right to do so Proceedings and overturned the verdict that had lasted for almost five decades.
Following that decision, at least 18 states have eliminated or restricted access to the process, and lawmakers expect more restrictions this year.
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