Sen. Bernie Sanders is running for the Democratic nomination for president, if you hadn’t heard. On Friday, Sanders, now in a runoff against Joe Biden, went after the former vice president’s evolving relationship with reproductive rights. At a rally in Detroit, Sanders quoted a now infamous statement from then-senator Biden in 1973 about the 1970 Roe v. Wade landmark decision granting women the right to choose whether or not she might have an abortion without government restrictions. “I don’t like the Supreme Court Decision on abortion. I think it went too far. I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body,” Sanders told the crowd.
The following day, Sanders’ campaign released a policy directed at women’s health care and justice, titled “Reproductive Health Care and Justice for All.” The policy plan begins with Sanders saying he would work to get the Hyde Amendment, the awful policy that blocks any federal funding to be used at all for abortion services, repealed. This is not a new stance from Sanders, who has promised the same result as a part of Medicare for All policy. But articulating one’s self on women’s reproductive rights is essential for any Democratic candidate to be in.
This law, of course, ends up stripping federal funding from tons of subsidized health care that many Americans rely on outside of abortions. Biden has long supported the Hyde Amendment, even up through this past summer. In recent months, Biden has said he doesn’t support the Hyde Amendment any longer, while his campaign has also said the former vice president does. As this is a clear instance of weakness in Biden’s campaign, Sanders’ new reproductive healthcare plan hopes to reframe some of Sanders’ already existing policy ideas to target Biden directly.
Sanders’ policy also puts forth a plan to “Codify Roe v. Wade in legislative statute,” while also requiring “all judicial nominees to support Roe v. Wade as settled law.” Sanders hopes that in digging down on his over-arching Medicare for All program, he can appeal to many segments of the electorate who may not fully understand the positive ramifications of the universal healthcare model. To that end, Sanders also points to a need to end the black maternal mortality crisis by increasing funding in communities of color and working for “women of color-led community organizations” in developing and implementing policies that would help achieve some of these goals.
The Sanders plan also includes pushes to pass important legislation that would improve patient safety by making more resources mandatory, as a part of care in hospitals and other providers, including limits on over-working medical staff. None of these programs are new to the Sanders campaign, but it is nice to see the campaign working to explain the nuances of how economic, racial, and gender justice are tied together by policy.