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President Joe Biden will convene key members of his Cabinet on Monday to discuss abortion rights on the 51st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, according to a White House official. The president will “hear directly from physicians on the frontlines of the fallout” since the landmark decision was reversed and detail new actions his administration is taking to strengthen access to contraception and medication abortion, as well as ensuring patients can receive emergency medical care. The meeting will mark the fourth time his task force on reproductive health care access has come together since the fall of Roe roughly a year and a half ago.  (Alba, 1/22)

The Biden campaign will hit the airwaves in battleground states with its first abortion-focused ad of the year, featuring stark, emotional testimony from a woman personally affected by a state abortion ban who lays the blame directly on former President Donald Trump. It comes as the campaign is launching a full-court press this week to put abortion rights front and center in the 2024 race, including with events headlined by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. The push marks the campaign’s first organized effort to emphasize the issue, seeking to further galvanize voters around reproductive rights in the first presidential election after the Supreme Court ended the federal constitutional right to an abortion. (Saenz, 1/22)

“This is the biggest election in terms of abortion that I’ve lived through and any of us have lived through to date,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor of law at UC Davis and a leading abortion historian. One major change since the 1970s is that abortion is now a partisan issue. “That was not true in 1973. It was hard to be a single-issue voter,” said Ms. Ziegler. “In 1976, neither candidate had a very clear position on abortion.” (Webster, 1/22)

Today marks 51 years since Roe v. Wade, now overturned, was decided. And the anniversary is one of many opportunities that Democrats are seizing to remind voters which party seeks to keep curtailing abortion access. “It’s crystal clear to me that the GOP is fully committed to a nationwide abortion ban,” Rep. Pat Ryan told Playbook. “They’re continuing to even more aggressively pursue that, literally choosing a speaker of the House that authored the bill for a nationwide abortion ban. And that would certainly affect New York.” (Ngo, Reisman and Coltin, 1/22)

Roe v. Wade may be history but Monday's anniversary of the 1973 decision is providing a potent rallying point for both sides in the abortion wars. Amid a showdown over funding the government, House Republican leaders brought up a pair of symbolic bills they said would protect pregnant women's rights but that Democrats contend would further erode abortion access. (Knight, 1/19)

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says an Oklahoma hospital did not violate federal law when doctors told a woman with a nonviable pregnancy to wait in the parking lot until her condition worsened enough to qualify for an abortion under the state’s strict ban. Jaci Statton, 26, was among several women last year who challenged abortion restrictions that went into effect in Republican-led states after the Supreme Court revoked the nationwide right to abortion in 2022. Rather than join a lawsuit, Statton filed a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA. (Kruesi, 1/19)

Less than two years ago, the Supreme Court eliminated the federal right to an abortion, a decision that the court’s conservative majority suggested would remove them from further litigation of abortion rights.  ”The Court’s decision properly leaves the question of abortion for the people and their elected representatives in the democratic process,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion. But this term, the court is now set to hear two cases that could further undercut access to the procedure. (Luthra, 1/19)