First lady Jill Biden recently discussed helping her friend recover from an abortion in Pennsylvania in the late 1960s when the procedure was illegal and warned that “extremist Republicans” will push for more restrictions on abortion now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned.
On Friday, Biden told the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Women’s Lunch and Issues Conference in San Fransisco the story of her friend’s abortion, which happened when she was 17, years before the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion.
“To end the pregnancy, she told me that her only recourse was to undergo a psychiatric evaluation that would declare her mentally unfit before the doctor would perform the procedure,” Biden said.
“I went to see her in the hospital and then cried the whole drive home,” she added.
She said her friend could not return home after being discharged from the hospital so Biden invited the friend to stay with her family.
Biden’s mom, Bonny Jean Jacobs, agreed to have the friend stay and “she never told a soul, including, as far as I know, my dad,” she said, adding that she and her mom “never spoke about it again.” Jacobs died in 2008.
“Secrecy. Shame. Silence. Danger. Even death. That’s what defined that time for so many women,” Biden said.
She said she was shocked by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe in June.
“It was devastating. How could we go back to that time?” she asked.
“I thought of all the girls and women, like my friend, whose education, careers and future depended on the ability to choose when they have children,” she said.
The first lady said that women “will not let this country go backwards” and let “some radical Republican agenda be the legacy we leave to our daughters and granddaughters.”
Biden told the story again on Saturday at a private fundraiser in Seattle for Democratic Senator Patty Murray’s reelection campaign.