President Joe Biden spoke on the Supreme Court’s decision Friday upending abortion rights .
The court’s conservative majority voted Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade as it upheld a Mississippi law that bans nearly all abortions past 15 weeks of pregnancy.
Justice Samuel Alito, who also authored the bombshell draft opinion leaked to the public earlier this year indicating this outcome, wrote in the opinion that Roe was “egregiously wrong from the start.”
“Abortion presents a profound moral question,” Alito wrote. “The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. The Court overrules those decisions and returns that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”
The three liberal justices slammed the majority’s opinion, writing that the decision essentially “says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of.”
The ruling was met with immediate protest from individuals on both sides of the abortion debate.
People celebrate the U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning Roe V. Wade in Washington, June 24, 2022.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Biden previously weighed in on this issue after the draft opinion, which is nearly identical to Friday’s ruling, was made public in early May.
“It concerns me a great deal that, after 50 years, we’re going to decide that a woman doesn’t have the right to choose,” Biden told reporters at the time.
“The idea that we’re going to make a judgment that is going to say that no one can make the judgment to choose to abort a child, based on a decision by the Supreme Court, I think goes way overboard,” he added.
Biden also expressed concern that the ruling would impact other Supreme Court decisions relating to the notion of privacy — such as contraception and same-sex marriage rights.
President Joe Biden delivers remarks in the East Room of the White House, June 13, 2022, in Washington, DC.
Win Mcnamee/Getty Images
It remains unclear what action, if any, Biden can take to protect abortion access after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Abortion rights activists previously told ABC News they believed Biden could employ the Food and Drug Administration and Medicaid to fill gaps in care.