The Department of Justice launched today a new task force that aims to protect women’s reproductive healthcare freedom in the aftermath of the shocking Supreme Court decision to overturn the constitutional right to an abortion.
The Reproductive Rights Task Force will “monitor and evaluate” state and local legislation and enforcement that will infringe reproductive freedoms. This includes limiting someone’s ability to seek reproductive care, banning abortion-inducing drugs, or imposing criminal or civil consequences on federal employees who provide reproductive health services, which are legal under federal law.
The new task force is charged by Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who said in a statement that the Department of Justice is committed to protecting reproductive rights.
“The Court abandoned 50 years of precedent and took away the constitutional right to abortion, preventing women all over the country from being able to make critical decisions about our bodies, our health, and our futures,” Gupta said.
The new task force comes after President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Friday that aims to protect abortion rights. He called upon the Justice Department “much like they did in the civil rights era, to do something, to do everything in their power to protect these women seeking to invoke their rights.”
The Department of Justice’s announcement of a task force formalizes the existing efforts being made by the department to support universal access to reproductive health care.
Part of the task force’s job will be to monitor laws that seek to ban Mifepristone, which is one of the two drugs typically used to end early-stage pregnancies.
Another job will be to monitor laws that impair a woman’s ability to seek care in states where abortion is legal, regardless of if she lives there.
After the Supreme Court, which is stacked heavily by the conservative side, ruled to overturn abortion rights, 26 states lined up to either immediately, or soon, ban abortion.
Some anti-abortion bills could potential criminalize the procedure or make it harder for women to travel out of state to receive one.
The Supreme Court decision has been widely condemned across America, as well as across the world.
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