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President Joe Biden blasted the U.S. Supreme Court for refusing to block Texas’ six-week abortion ban and slammed the Texas Legislature for passing such a bill, calling the new state law “a bizarre scheme” that “unleashes unconstitutional chaos and empowers self-anointed enforcers to have devastating impacts.”

“This law is so extreme it does not even allow for exceptions in the case of rape or incest,” he said in a written statement Thursday. “And it not only empowers complete strangers to inject themselves into the most private of decisions made by a woman — it actually incentivizes them to do so with the prospect of $10,000 if they win their case.”

RELATED: U.S. Supreme Court refuses to block Texas' six-week abortion ban  

Biden’s statement was a rare presidential rebuke of the judiciary. It’s particularly striking because Biden served as the Senate Judiciary Committee chair in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a role in which he embraced deference to the court — to the frustration of liberals.

“For the [Supreme Court] majority to do this without a hearing, without the benefit of an opinion from a court below, and without due consideration of the issues, insults the rule of law and the rights of all Americans to seek redress from our courts,” he added. “Rather than use its supreme authority to ensure justice could be fairly sought, the highest Court of our land will allow millions of women in Texas in need of critical reproductive care to suffer while courts sift through procedural complexities.”

Biden promised to direct executive branch lawyers “to launch a whole-of-government effort to respond to this decision” and “to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions as protected by Roe [v. Wade], and what legal tools we have to insulate women and providers from the impact of Texas’ bizarre scheme of outsourced enforcement to private parties.”

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This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2021/09/02/texas-abortion-law-joe-biden/.

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