First lady Jill Biden will be helping her husband bring attention to the abortion issue at the upcoming State of the Union.
In his address to the joint session of Congress on March 7, President Joe Biden is expected to focus some remarks on the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. And a Texas woman who made headlines when her pregnancy was directly affected by the court’s decision is slated to be Jill Biden’s guest at the event.
BREAKING: Kate Cox, who was forced out of Texas to deal with the horror and heartbreak of a nonviable pregnancy, has accepted first lady Jill Biden’s invitation to be a guest at the State of the Union address. pic.twitter.com/y6tt1vh1mS — D. Earl Stephens (@EarlOfEnough) January 24, 2024
“On Sunday, the President and the First Lady spoke to Kate Cox, who was forced to go to court to seek permission for the care she needed for a nonviable pregnancy that threatened her life,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced Wednesday.
On Sunday, @POTUS and @FLOTUS spoke to Kate Cox, who was forced to go to court to seek permission for the care she needed for a non-viable pregnancy that threatened her health. They thanked her for speaking out about the impact of the extreme abortion ban in Texas. pic.twitter.com/i7jDcIug5c — Karine Jean-Pierre (@PressSec) January 24, 2024
“They thanked her for her courage in sharing her story and speaking out about the impact of the extreme abortion ban in Texas,” she continued. “The First Lady invited Kate to join her as a guest at the State of the Union and Kate accepted, so those are ways that you’re going to hear the president lift up those very personal stories,” Jean-Pierre added.
According to CBS News:
Cox, 31, and her husband, Justin, were parents to a girl and a boy already when they discovered in August 2023 that she was pregnant with their third child. But a series of tests revealed the baby they were expecting had serious medical problems, including trisomy 18, a severe genetic condition. The Cox family was told their baby would live a week at best, if she survived the pregnancy and birth, and Kate Cox said she feared for her own health and safety. But Texas has effectively banned abortions, and Kate Cox’s request to obtain a court order for an abortion was denied by the state Supreme Court. Ultimately, Cox left the state and received an abortion in New Mexico, and said goodbye to the baby she and her husband had named “Chloe.”
Jean-Pierre elaborated on the invitation during the press briefing on Wednesday.
“It is important for Americans to hear the horror stories that we’re hearing from women of their experiences across the country,” she said. “The Biden-Harris administration is standing with a majority of Americans on this. With a majority of Americans. And Republican elected officials are just not.”
Democrats continue to claim that Republicans are trying to take away women’s rights and take away their health care, making the abortion issue with stories like Cox’s becoming the rallying cry as the 2024 elections loom. Biden was introduced at a rally Tuesday by Amanda Zurawski, one of five women who sued Texas last year over abortion.
Biden asserted former President Trump is “most responsible” for the 2022 Supreme Court ruling, and claimed at a rally in Manassas, Virginia, on Tuesday, that women are “being turned away from our emergency rooms, forced to travel hundreds of miles to get basic health care, forced to go to court to plead to help to protect themselves, and the ability to often have children in the future.”
“Let there be no mistake: the person most responsible for taking away this freedom in America is Donald Trump,” he said. “Trump says he’s proud that he overturned Roe v. Wade.”