Becerra fears abortion fight is the ‘painful’ start to an erosion of U.S. freedoms

Xavier Becerra was in Missouri when the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, watching powerlessly as Republicans triggered an immediate, near-total ban on abortion procedures statewide.

In February, the secretary of health and human services traveled to Alabama, where he witnessed firsthand the fallout from a local court decision that temporarily banned in vitro fertilization.

And in April, weeks before Florida’s six-week abortion ban went into effect, Becerra flew to the state to warn of dire consequences not just for women there, but for those living without access to care across the entire South.

Becerra’s ambitious tour on reproductive rights has proven a humbling and foreboding experience. Progress is scattershot and impermanent. Conversations with expectant mothers scarred by health traumas have haunted him. “The stories that women will tell you make it clear that this is real. This is not some fantasy, or some speculation — this is real,” Becerra told McClatchy in an interview.

Nearing the end of President Joe Biden’s four-year term, Becerra finds himself in a fight he never expected, fearful the fall of Roe is only the start of an ebbing current on American freedoms.

“I speak not just as secretary on this, but as an American — a first-generation American, the son of immigrants — who always grew up believing that the next day’s going to be better,” Becerra said. “Perhaps what worries me most is seeing the fabric of America begin to feel the stain of undemocratic values.”

“My biggest fear is that we begin to see that, where we’re taking away rights — we’re taking away freedoms from people,” he added. “It’s painful to see a country that’s beginning to tell people, ‘you need to have fewer rights.’”

FIGHT FOR EMERGENCY CARE

Becerra was in Boise last month when he finally received some news he actually welcomed. The Supreme Court accidentally posted its decision allowing abortions to take place in Idaho when physicians determine the mother faces a medical emergency that threatens her health or her life.

It was a rare victory on a legal front where the administration had thus far seen little success. Wasting no time, the secretary sent a sharply-worded letter to health care providers citing the decision, telling them that federal law requires hospital facilities receiving Medicare funding — virtually all hospitals in the country — to perform abortions in emergency circumstances.

“We’re making it clear to all Americans that they have a right to access emergency care, to go to an emergency room and get the care that a physician says that they need to stabilize their health and to stay alive — not what a politician says,” Becerra said. “No politician should be in an emergency room telling a doctor what to do.”

The Supreme Court decision, in fact, simply sent the case back down to lower courts for further review. But Becerra said the Biden administration interpreted the Supreme Court’s ruling as a decision to keep federal law on emergency medical treatment in place.

“Now that we know that that federal law that protects emergency care stands, we’re going to do everything we can,” he added.

The administration is ceding little of the ground that remains under its control in the abortion fight.

Becerra said that doctors, not politicians, should decide whether mental health should be a consideration when determining whether an expectant mother is facing a health crisis — an interpretation of federal law on emergency care that, if adopted by the administration, could broadly expand access to reproductive procedures.

And the administration is working to shield the privacy of physicians who are located in states where abortion remains legal and are accepting patients from out of state, risking exposure to prosecution from across state lines.

“Any time you go beyond what the medical practice has told you is appropriate health care, you risk putting Americans — other peoples’ health — in true danger,” he said. “All of these questions are being posed because there are politicians who decide they want to enter the field of medicine, even though they never got trained to be medical professionals.”

BIDEN LIMITED

But the administration has been limited in its ability to push back. Instead, it has been voters — including those in reliably conservative states — that have exacted change to strict abortion laws throughout the country. Ballot measures in Kansas and Kentucky in 2022, and Ohio in 2023, rejected abortion bans, and Democrats hope to succeed this year with similar measures on ballots in Florida, New York, and potentially Missouri and Arizona.

Failure in the upcoming elections could scuttle the Biden administration’s work. The Republican Party platform announced this week expresses support for in vitro fertilization procedures, and defers to states to determine their own regulations on abortion. But allies of the former president have been discussing potential executive orders that could hamstring access to reproductive medicines and other contraceptives.

“Here’s where it becomes so obvious why Roe v. Wade was such an important decision in this country: It established a threshold of protective rights,” Becerra said. “It established the preeminence of physicians and medical professionals making decisions about our health. It protected people who wanted to simply access the health care they needed.”

Over 171,000 women traveled to have an abortion last year, according to the Guttmacher Institute, fleeing in droves from Texas to California, from Idaho to Washington, and from Georgia to North Carolina.

Some of those options may only grow more restricted after the November election. In North Carolina, for example, the outcome of the governor’s race will likely determine whether abortion access remains an option in the state.

“When Roe went away, it wasn’t just abortion that was struck. It was our access to health care, period,” he added. “It was our personal freedom, our autonomy, to making health care decisions that was stripped from us.”

“Let’s just hope that we never get to the point where America has laws in place that continue to erode our rights,” he added.