President Joe Biden said the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to overturn the constitutional right to abortion will deny American women control of their own lives and called on voters to protect their rights in upcoming elections.
“It’s a sad day for the court and the country,” Biden said in a White House speech, calling the decision “cruel” and saying it takes America back 150 years.
Former United States Secretary of State and First Lady Hillary Clinton condemned the Supreme Court decision to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that recognised a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion and legalised it nationwide as a “step backwards for women’s rights and human rights”.
In a social media post, Clinton said she was committed to protecting “reproductive freedom for everyone in America”.
Fellow former First Lady Michelle Obama said in her own social media statement that she was “heartbroken” by the decision on Friday.
“I am heartbroken for people around this country who just lost the fundamental right to make informed decisions about their own bodies,” her post read.
View this post on Instagram
The court, in a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative majority, upheld a Republican-backed Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks. The vote was 5-4 to overturn Roe, with Chief Justice John Roberts writing separately to say he would have upheld the Mississippi law but not taken the additional step of erasing the precedent altogether.
