Activists press Biden to do more to safeguard abortion

WASHINGTON－Hundreds of abortion rights protesters waved banners and chanted outside the White House on Saturday, demanding that the United States President Joe Biden take stronger action to protect access to the procedure recently revoked by the Supreme Court.

The estimated 1,000-strong crowd of mainly women shouted slogans such as "My body, my choice" and some sat down on the sidewalk in pouring rain, with police standing by.

With Biden spending the weekend at his holiday home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, a few hours away, demonstrators called on him to do more to combat the June 24 Supreme Court ruling overturning the Roe v Wade decision of 1973, which had enshrined the right to abortion in the US.

"Stand up, Joe Biden," said one woman, 37, who said she had traveled more than two hours to Washington from Virginia. She carried a banner reading, "Abortion on demand without apology."

An executive order Biden signed on Friday aiming to help women access abortion pills and travel to states where they can still get an abortion was insufficient, she said.

"Fix this," said the woman, who did not want to be identified. "This executive order that he put out wasn't enough. I want a world that wasn't the world that my grandmother had to live in. My mom already fought for this in the streets. We shouldn't have to be here."

Another woman who also declined to be identified was at the rally with her three daughters, one in her 20s and the other two in their teens. "We really feel that he needs to explore the fullest extent of his power of the executive branch to ensure that women retain their rights, their reproductive rights," she said of Biden.

Biden, whose room for maneuver on the issue is limited, has come under fire for perceived inaction since the court ruling. As he signed the executive order, he called on US citizens in November to vote en masse and elect lawmakers who support abortion rights and give him firm control of Congress so he can codify such rights into federal law and bypass the Supreme Court ruling.

Agencies via Xinhua