“The Supreme Court’s ruling overnight is an unprecedented assault on a woman’s constitutional rights under Roe v. Wade, which has been the law of the land for almost 50 years,” he said Thursday. “By allowing a law to go into effect that empowers private citizens in Texas to sue healthcare providers, family members supporting a woman exercising her right to choose after six weeks, or even a friend who drives her to a hospital or clinic, it unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts.”

In the lengthy statement, Biden also announced he was directing the White House’s Gender Policy Council and Office of Counsel to launch “a whole-of-government effort” to respond to the decision.

Aides will explore what steps the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice can take “to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions,” the president said. They, too, will assess what legal tools they have at their disposal “to insulate women and providers from the impact of Texas’s bizarre scheme of outsourced enforcement to private parties,” he added.

The Supreme Court issued the 5-4 ruling shortly after midnight Thursday. The law, which prohibits abortions after medical professionals detect a heartbeat, went into effect roughly 24 hours earlier. Abortion rights advocates have criticized the legislation as the strictest anti-abortion measure since the bench heard the Roe v. Wade case in 1973.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

“This extreme Texas law blatantly violates the constitutional right established under Roe v. Wade and upheld as precedent for nearly half a century,” Biden said Wednesday.