President Joe Biden signed an executive order he says aims to protect a woman’s access to reproductive healthcare services including abortion.
You can read the order on the White House's website.
Some of the things it does include are providing leave for federal workers seeking an abortion out of state, establishing a Task Force on Reproductive Health Care Access and issuing new guidance on patient privacy laws, telling medical providers they in many cases, are not permitted to disclose patients’ private information, including to law enforcement investigating abortions.
University of Michigan School of Nursing professor Ruth Zielinski says this clarification is something health care workers need not just to protect themselves legally, but to make sure patients tell them the information needed for care.
“Where patients can’t talk about, gosh I might be pregnant or I am pregnant and tried to terminate the pregnancy, patients are going to die,” Zielinski said.
Right now, abortion is legal in Michigan and this gives women who come here privacy.
The order also creates a team of volunteer lawyers to help citizens navigate these changing laws, which professor Anna Kirkland from the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at U of M acknowledges this is a confusing time.
“People who are trying to cross stateliness are going to need lawyers and this is not something people are used to,” Kirkland said.
“I don’t think the executive order does much,” said Richard Friedman, a professor of law at the University of Michigan.
Friedman says the executive order’s impact across the country is limited. In Michigan for now, it is even more limited. After all, a court injunction temporarily has blocked a 1931 law banning abortions from going into effect, and there currently is a petition drive that may put the right to an abortion on the November ballot.
“I think it is more than anything an effort to show he is doing whatever he can. The president doesn’t have a lot of authority here,” Friedman said
Friedman says more power over laws on access lies in the hands of voters or Congress.
