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Biden calls Alabama IVF ruling “outrageous and unacceptable”
Washington — President Biden on Thursday called the Alabama Supreme Court ruling that frozen embryos are considered children under the law “outrageous and unacceptable.”
“Make no mistake: this is a direct result of the overturning of Roe v. Wade,” Mr. Biden said in a statement, vowing to keep fighting for women’s reproductive rights “until we restore the protections of Roe v. Wade in federal law for all women in every state.”
The University of Alabama at Birmingham, the state’s largest hospital, said Wednesday it was pausing in vitro fertilization, or IVF, treatments as it evaluates the implications of the court’s decision.
“We are saddened that this will impact our patients’ attempt to have a baby through IVF, but we must evaluate the potential that our patients and our physicians could be prosecuted criminally or face punitive damages for following the standard of care for IVF treatments,” a statement from the health system said.
The health system said it would continue performing egg retrievals, but would not take the next step in the fertilization process by combining eggs with sperm in a lab, resulting in embryos.
Another clinic, Alabama Fertility Specialists, also said it was pausing IVF treatments “due to the legal risk to our clinic and our embryologists.”
The decision could have broad effects on the legality of IVF, which has helped women struggling with fertility get pregnant. During the process, more embryos are typically created than are implanted. The surviving embryos are then stored and can later be destroyed if a couple decides not to have more children.
The ruling stemmed from couples suing for wrongful death after their frozen embryos were destroyed when a hospital patient in Mobile, Alabama, dropped the containers they were stored in.
Earlier Thursday, Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign connected the ruling to former President Donald Trump, who reshaped the U.S. Supreme Court by appointing three conservative justices.
“What is happening in Alabama right now is only possible because Donald Trump’s Supreme Court justices overturned Roe v. Wade,” Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a statement that warned the ruling would prevent couples from growing their families.
Vice President Kamala Harris reiterated that point during a visit to Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Thursday.
“When you look at the fact that the previous president of the United States was clear in his intention to hand pick three Supreme Court justices who would overturn the protections of Roe v. Wade, and he did it and that’s what got us to this point today,” Harris said.
“Individuals, couples who want to start a family are now being deprived of access to what can help them start a family,” Harris added.
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Biden’s DHS Secretary says a “terrific solution” to immigration surge was killed by “irresponsible politics”
Washington — Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said as his time at the helm of the nation’s immigration enforcement comes to a close that “a really terrific solution was killed by irresponsible politics” when the bipartisan border deal fell apart earlier this year.
Mayorkas pointed to the agreement on a border package reached by a bipartisan group of Senate negotiators in February reached after months of deliberations that would have marked the first comprehensive border security policy overhaul in decades — and give the president far-reaching powers to clamp down on unlawful border crossings. But the bill was quickly rejected by Republicans after President-elect Donald Trump expressed his opposition.
Following the legislation’s failure, the Biden administration instituted asylum restrictions that dramatically cut off the flow of immigration. When asked about the timing amid criticism from Republicans that the Biden administration possessed the authority without Congress to act on the border, Mayorkas acknowledged that the administration may have taken the action more quickly if they knew the border deal would be torpedoed.
“Looking back now in hindsight, in 2020 if we had known that irresponsible politics would have killed what was clearly a meritorious effort and a meritorious result, perhaps we would have taken executive action more rapidly,” Mayorkas said in an interview that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.”
The comments come as border crossings have dropped to the lowest level of the Biden administration, after reaching record highs a year ago.
The Homeland Security Secretary noted that before Mr. Biden came into office, the “trend lines of migration” were increasing exponentially in 2018 and 2019 worldwide, “and then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.” He added over time, the Biden administration built up capabilities that have allowed it to transport individuals and decompress areas seeing surges in immigration, saying that “we’ve been executing on enforcement at an unprecedented level throughout this administration.”
“We are now removing or returning more individuals in three years than the prior administration did in four, and we are doing so not only greater in volume, but greater in speed, because of the negotiations with other countries and to more countries than has ever been the case,” Mayorkas said.
Sen. Joe Manchin hasn’t quite figured out what he’ll do next once he leaves the Senate next month.
But whatever his future holds, he plans to keep hosting his former colleagues Congress on his popular houseboat in West Virginia. Manchin has for years hosted politicians of both parties aboard the “Almost Heaven,” which has been docked in Washington, his way of bringing his colleagues on both sides of the aisle together.
“I’m going to be involved,” Manchin told CBS News’ “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” “The boat’s staying here.”
Manchin, who mulled an independent presidential bid this year, said he would have “loved to have had a platform” to speak centrist common sense, as he put it.
He expressed hope for President-elect Donald Trump’s success — despite previously saying that electing Trump would be “very detrimental” to the country. Manchin has said the rioting at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was a “bridge too far” for him.
“When the people speak and they make their choice and the election’s over, you better pray with everything you have the president will be successful,” Manchin told Brennan. “And if you’re in a position to help, you have knowledge of how the system works and can make it work, do it. … This is about our country, and I want him to succeed, and I have said this to him, I’ll do whatever I can to help in any way humanly possible.”
Manchin was West Virginia’s governor before he won his U.S. Senate seat in 2010. Since then, he’s tried to work with both parties. He formally left the Democratic Party in May, registering as an independent.
Manchin is still hoping to push a bill to ease the permitting process for the energy industry through Congress. He said he encouraged Trump to make it happen during a conversation at the Army-Navy game in Maryland last weekend.
His Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 would facilitate a faster permitting process for oil and natural gas, renewable energy, mineral mining and transmission lines. It hasn’t progressed in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
Manchin said he’s hoping Trump will watch his interview with “Face the Nation” and take a serious look at his bill.
“So now with this interview, I’m hoping, I’m asking President Trump to truly look at this permitting bill, because it is basically a good piece of legislation that we’ve never moved this far in a bipartisan way, with John Barrasso, going to be the No. 2 man in the Republican Senate, a good person, a good friend of mine,” Manchin told Brennan. “We worked hard and negotiated hard, and have a good bill. It’s ready to go. We have the bill ready. He could just drop it in.”
Manchin said he thinks Trump understands the political realities at play in Washington better than he did when he won in 2016. And the reality is that the Senate remains more independent than the House, he said.
“I think he understands it an awful lot better now than he did in 2016 when he won the first time,” Manchin said. “So now he’s got some experience under him. He understands the process, but he understands, also, the power that he’s wielding right now, the influence he has” with the House and Senate, which will be in Republican hands in January. Manchin wants to keep the filibuster in place; it requires most bills to reach a 60-vote threshold for consideration.
“I think there’s enough Republican senators and Democrat senators too, but Republicans have control because they’re the majority, that are not going to let the filibuster blow apart,” Manchin said. “… I don’t think they will do that. And it only takes five, or it takes four, I’m sorry, it takes four Republican senators, just four, and I guarantee you, I think there’s a lot more than four.”
Those Republicans, he said, will “protect the institution.”
“They’ve been here long enough,” Manchin said. “What goes around comes around, and in two years, this thing could flip — 2026, you never know. It’s the power of the people.”
contributed to this report.
