By Kaden Scharnow
On October 18th, 2022, President Joe Biden gave a hearing regarding major issues plaguing the nation. He first kicked off the speech by mentioning that the Labor Department reported 370,000 jobs added as of last month. This is huge for the economy, recovering all the lost jobs from the Covid-19 Pandemic and adding more on top of that. He gave himself much praise, saying that “In the second quarter of this year, we created more jobs than any quarter under any of my predecessors in nearly 40 years before the pandemic.” He reflected on the economy’s state at the start of his presidency, mentioning critics called it “too weak.” Which was compared to his first year of presidency, where more jobs were created than “any President in history.”
He then went on to mention inflation status, regarding gas prices being higher than ever before, and the challenges citizens are facing. He reported that gas prices had been falling 25 days in a row then, and the second largest single-day decrease in gas prices that week. He also mentioned unemployment rates were at an all-time low, at 3.5 percent. Biden expressed these were signs of his “economic plan moving the country in a better direction.” He admitted that there was more work to be done, but suggested that “we are making progress. The program is working.”
He then addressed the aftermath and widespread controversy coming with the overturning of the Roe V Wade Supreme Court Case. He insisted that the Constitution had no influence in the decision and, despite the statements of the justices, was not a decision driven by history. To further explain a decision “driven by history”, he said the court “rattled off” laws from the 19th century and that many states outlawed abortion in the 1880s, “Thats just wrong.” He further explains that common law and manys states actually did not criminalize early abortions 150 years ago, similar to the viability line drawn by Roe v Wade. He goes on with “This wasn’t about the Constitution or the Law” but that it was about a “deep, long-seeking” antipathy towards the case, and that it was only overruled because the majority “now has the votes to discard them.”
Biden explained that the overturning wasn’t an example of constitutional judgment, but raw political power. He urged viewers and citizens to vote representatives that were pro-choice during the election this November. He expressed that voters – especially female – should take this as an opportunity to voice against pro-life and “restore the very rights they’ve taken away.” He expressed that it was his belief that “women will, in fact, turn out in record numbers to reclaim the rights that have been taken from them by the Court.”
Biden continued by saying this action was “a giant step backwards in much of our country”, and that this was not an imagined horror, but one that was already happening. He referenced the case of a 10 year old Ohio girl, a rape victim from just a few weeks ago. She had to travel out of Ohio, an anti-abortion state, to Indiana to terminate the forced pregnancy. He used this to prove that this was the most extreme issue to be dealt with at the moment. He gave a warning that Republican government officials were working on passing a nation-wide ban on abortion, and once again urged viewers to go out and vote, and that if in the case a bill like it ever turned up on his desk, it would be vetoed.
President Biden closed out the hearing with an executive order signing titled “Protecting Access to Reproductive Health Care Services.”
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