On abortion rights, Blue Dog Biden is all bark, no bite

In a deeply unconvincing speech full of stale platitudes and bare-minimum promises, President Joe Biden treated abortion rights like they were a campaign-trail side dish rather than the main course of his coming election. If you’ve seen the articles gushing about his 2024 State of the Union address, you’ve probably noticed a number of outlets striving to center the abortion part of his speech — as though they might encourage him, like a grade schooler, by loudly praising even the poorest effort in order to spur him toward better attempts.

And I get it. We all need some hope right now. Taking your wins where you can get them — no matter how small — is part of that. But Biden’s not a kid, and I’m not here to spare the rod. I’ll vote how I must, but I’m not so scared of Donald Trump’s return that I’ll grit my teeth and cheer for whatever bare-minimum candidate the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee props up on stage. And if you care about abortion rights, you shouldn’t cheer either. At least not for a string of empty promises and hollow threats. If you haven’t seen the abortion excerpt of Biden’s speech, Time Magazine’s video cut is tidy enough.

“My predecessor came to office determined to see Roe v. Wade overturned. He’s the reason it was overturned, and he brags about it. Look at the chaos that has resulted,” Biden said. “If you, the American people, send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you I will restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again.“

Bullshit.

You want to know why Roe was overturned? Because it could be. For 49 years, the entire right to abortion in this country hinged on a court ruling, not a law. And that ruling was left undefended by lawmakers who had every chance to make it the law of the land. Democrats have had since 1973 — the year Roe was ruled and that Biden was first elected to office — to enshrine the bare-minimum right that American women only narrowly obtained after having to scrape and plead and fight and die for it. Democrats had trifecta control of the House, Senate and White House in 1993 under Bill Clinton, 2009 under Barack Obama, and 2021 to 2023 under Biden — and they could have codified Roe through any of those years.

They didn’t.

Of course, as he told an interviewer in 2006, Biden himself did “not view abortion as a choice and a right.” And, until 2019 when his campaign advisers apparently directed his attention to the year printed on the calendar, Biden still thought federal funds shouldn’t be used for abortions.

In the hours before the SOTU, the White House sent out what can only be seen as a desperate reminder of their list of good deeds following the fall of Roe. They include: allowing a sliver of abortion access for Veterans Affairs patients and active military; reminding hospital administrators and insurance companies of the rules they’re already under; offering hard-to-use Medicaid waivers to patients seeking out-of-state abortion care; taking the first step to improve abortion data privacy; and, most critically, finally getting contraception approved for over the counter sale.

And, yes, those are all good things. Every marginal inch we can get, even if it’s a watered down half-measure, is a good thing. But this list isn’t enough and everyone knows it. This is just another male politician offering women the bare minimum possible while expecting our gratitude — and still under-delivering while blaming others. Biden’s moves wouldn’t have been necessary had Democrats delivered protections for abortion rights at any point in the past five decades instead of using the fear of loss rights as a cudgel to get women to the polls.

It was nice of him to sign that executive order when Roe fell but, as Reuters put it, “it offered few specifics and promises to have limited impact in practice, since U.S. states can make laws restricting abortion and access to medication.”

“The White House is not publicly entertaining the idea of reforming the court itself or expanding the nine-member panel,” the outlet reported.

I know, I know — I can hear you asking some fair questions. Don’t I care how much worse it could have been under the GOP? Aren’t I grateful that we had Biden and the Democrats to triage the damage of Dobbs? Can’t I just appreciate the crumbs he left on the table for us?

No. Abortion rights are an expectation of any free people and an entitlement by virtue of biological nature. I will therefore act with entitlement toward my body and life. I will not praise a Democratic president for doing the bare minimum expected of him in a moment when my life is threatened. No more than I would praise a Republican president for not threatening my life.

By some accounts, it took Biden 468 days to even say the word abortion once he took office. The first time he said it was on May 3, 2022, hastily addressing the leaked SCOTUS draft opinion. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade the next month. When it did, my state, Kentucky, was the first to effectively ban abortions in the US. In July, we found out that the night before Roe fell, the White House sent our governor an email “heads up” that Biden was set to nominate an anti-abortion Republican to a federal, lifetime-appointment judgeship in Kentucky.

“It's why Biden's failure to say the word 'abortion' matters so much. It's not a gotcha by advocates and activists. You can't defend what you won't name,” Rewire’s Jessica Mason Pieklo tweeted.

Our last abortion clinic is still closed — and, for all his bluster, Biden won’t bother coming to Kentucky in his post-SOTU campaigning. Likewise, as Kentucky’s volunteer network of grannies and aunties have been shuttling women and girls back-and-forth over state lines, begging for donations to abortion travel funds and running estimates on the likely increases of teen pregnancies and maternal mortality, Biden was taking his sweet time to come up with abortion access options for ban states like mine.

I don’t recall seeing him down here doing the Lord’s work for the teen girls living in trailer parks and public housing projects who are just trying to get through high school in a state where 45% of women have faced sexual violence and the actual rape-kit backlog numbers aren’t clear. I certainly didn’t see him jumping into action, enacting immediate protection of abortion rights on federal lands inside ban states as everyone begged him to, nor jumping down Republicans’ throats with the fury of the Defense Department.

My criticism of Biden doesn’t come from a desire to see the GOP win in November. It comes from my inability to punch Nazis in the face without going to jail, and from my refusal to sit through the burning of the planet while watching women die. I’ve got no applause left in me for anyone who isn’t actively in the fight, and no feigned excitement for a party that treats a rising tide of dead women like a political opportunity. If Democrats want to see me clapping, they can drop the saccharine “malarky, by gosh” shtick and lay down some bare-knuckle brutal politics like the GOP has used against them at every turn.

The Democrats have most female voters hostage here; they know the GOP is more lethal to women on this issue, so they know women will vote Blue. But I’m not throwing roses at Biden’s feet just because he tosses us some crumbs. I’m keeping the roses — and I want my bread.