By Andrea Shalal
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden, under renewed pressure over high inflation with key elections coming up fast, will seek to turn attention back to the issue of abortion rights in a speech on Tuesday.
Biden’s Democrats could lose control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate too, in November midterm elections.
He is trying to rally the party and its supporters around abortion rights, which were sharply curtailed by the Supreme Court’s decision nearly four months ago to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling.
“The president will speak about the choice that voters face this November between Republicans who want to ban abortion nationwide, and Democrats who want to codify Roe into law to protect women’s reproductive freedom,” the Democratic National Committee said of Biden’s speech at the historic Howard Theatre in Washington on Tuesday.
Biden and top White House officials this month announced new guidelines and grants to protect abortion and contraception rights. He has said he would not “sit by and let Republicans throughout the country enact extreme policies.”
Abortion bans have gone into effect in more than a dozen states since the Supreme Court’s ruling on June 24.
The issue had created some momentum for Democratic candidates ahead of the November elections, but recent polls still show Republicans are likely to retake control of the House of Representatives with many voters concerned about inflation.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Additional reporting by Steve Holland and Jeff Mason; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell)
