Biden vows action to protect abortion rights as John Roberts confirms leaked opinion

A 22-year-old Las Vegas anti-abortion activist was arrested for trespassing and resisting arrest after climbing San Francisco’s tallest building on Tuesday, according to police.

Maison DesChamps, the self-described “Pro-Life Spiderman,” was taken into custody after scaling the building, during which he was posting on his Instagram.

Republican senators have expressed outrage over the leak of a draft opinion of the Supreme Court’s decision that would effectively overturn Roe v Wade.

But when asked what the consequences should be for abortion providers or women who seek abortions, Republicans mostly said it would be up to states to decide.

The Independent’s chief Washington correspondent Eric Garcia has more:

Protests across the US on Tuesday night demand protections for abortion rights, under threat from a forthcoming opinion by the US Supreme Court’s conservative majority.

Demonstrators returned to the Supreme Court after raging against a leaked opinion late on Monday night.

Protests were organised in US cities from New York City to Austin, Texas.

In remarks to women’s Democratic political action group Emily’s List, Vice President Kamala Harris defended constititional protections to abortion rights affirmed by the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade, which “has protected a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body for nearly half a century.”

She called the leaked opinion from the court’s conservative majority “a direct assault on freedom, on the fundamental right of self-determination to which all Americans are entitled.”

In her remarks, the vice president condemned Republican-backed measures to restrict abortion care across the US and urged Democrats and supporters to fight to preserve reproductive health protections.

“They want to bully anyone who seeks or provides reproductive healthcare, and they want to criminalize and punish women for making these decisions,” she said.

“At its core, Roe recognizes the fundamental right to privacy,” she added. “When the right to privacy is attacked, anyone in our country may face a future where the government can interfere in our decisions … It has never been more clear which party wants to expand our rights and wants to restrict them.”

She continued: “It has never been more clear which party wants to lead us forward, and which party wants to push us back. ... But we’re not going back. We are not going back.”

The vice president concluded with a call to action, stressing that “democracies cannot be strong if the rights of women are under attack.”

“Let us fight for our country and the principles upon which it was unfounded, and let us fight with everything we have got,” she said.

The World Health Organization estimates that around the world, 23,000 women die each year from unsafe abortions, with thousands more experiencing health complications from the unregulated procedures.

What the past can tell us, according to Gillian Frank, is something that holds true in the present, and the future: Restricting abortion “does not stop people from desiring, seeking and getting abortions”.

“What it affects is the expense and the quality of abortions, the kind of medical care you can get.”

The Independent’s Johanna Chisholm has more:

Joe Biden on Tuesday said he was “not prepared” to leave women’s right to choose “to the whims of the public” in the wake of the unprecedented leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion allowing states to force women to carry pregnancies to term.

“One of the reasons why I voted against the number of the members in the court, they didn’t choose to acknowledge that there’s a Ninth Amendment, they didn’t choose to acknowledge there’s a right to privacy,” he said. “I mean, there’s so many fundamental rights that are affected by that, and I’m not prepared to leave that to the whims of the public at the moment”.

More from Andrew Feinberg in Washington:

Without the constitutional right to abortion care affirmed in the Supreme Court ruling in Roe v Wade, roughly half of US states could immediately or quickly outlaw abortion, including 13 states with so-called “trigger” bans in place – laws designed to take effect without Roe.

Nine states have laws in place that banned abortions before the Roe ruling but have never been removed from the books; those laws are expected to go back into effect if the Supreme Court overturns it.