The White House on Thursday pushed back against skeptics of President Joe Biden's new executive order, or EO, on abortion rights.
"This EO does not — will not — violate the Hyde Amendment. It is law, and we follow the law here," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at the daily press briefing in response to whether the order flouts the Hyde Amendment.
Biden's order asks the Department of Health and Human Services to consider allowing Medicaid funds to be used to help facilitate out-of-state travel for women seeking abortions, a response to the recent Supreme Court decision to end the nationwide constitutional right to abortion.
But the Hyde Amendment bars taxpayer funding of abortion, which seemingly would prohibit the president from carrying it out.
Jean-Pierre didn't provide further details after the order was signed Wednesday when responding to reporters about the Hyde Amendment.
"How will you be able to pay, to help women pay, to cross a state line to get somewhere else where they need to go, given the restrictions of the Hyde Amendment?" a reporter asked.
The press secretary responded: "That is something HHS will come up with the details on.
"This is what the president is doing," Jean-Pierre added. "He is looking at everything that's available to him on the table — whatever is legally possible, what he can use, his executive authority — to move forward on."
On Thursday Jean-Pierre blasted the June decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade, calling it unconstitutional.
"It was an unconstitutional action by them — a right that was around for almost 50 years, a right that women had to make a decision on their bodies and how they want to start their families," she said.