President Biden supports the text of the Group of Seven (G7) statement on reproductive rights, according to officials, despite controversy over whether world leaders would include abortion in their statement at this year’s summit in Italy.
“He fully supports the language that appeared in the final statement. He felt strongly about the language that was conveyed,” a senior administration official told reporters.
Earlier on Friday,Reutersobtained a draft version of the declaration, which stated that leaders maintained commitments “to universal access to adequate, affordable and quality health services for women,” without mentioning reproductive health rights.
This would have led to a fight between Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and French President Emmanuel Macron over the inclusion of reproductive rights in the agreement to be signed by the group’s seven countries.
Meloni is one of the only far-right conservative leaders in the group of countries that have reportedly called for the removal of this language. Instead of the draft language, the leaders agreed to use the remaining language from the 2023 summit agreement, which included an explicit reference to abortion, although they did not end up using the word abortion in the text now awaiting signature.
The communiqué to be agreed this year says: “We reiterate our commitments in the Hiroshima Leaders’ Communiqué for universal access to adequate, affordable and quality health services for women, including comprehensive sexual and reproductive health and rights for all.”
The senior administration official pointed to this passage as “language related to abortion.” He added that “some of the words may not be identical, but the commitments are the same and that is the intention of what was put in the statement,” referring to the statement that followed the 2023 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, which the remaining language was extracted.
The 2023 statement included the importance of “access to safe and legal abortion and post-abortion care,” according to Reuters.
G7 leaders also met with Pope Francis on Thursday, before the statement was released. The Catholic Church is firmly against abortion and Biden, as the second Catholic president in US history, has been faced with the need to balance his faith with his support for access to abortion, especially in the wake of the overturn of Roe v. Wade. Biden expressed discomfort with the word abortion.
The Pope and Biden met face to face on Thursday. Conservative U.S. Catholic bishops at the start of the Biden administration led calls for the Church not to offer him communion due to their support for access.
When Biden and the Pope met in October 2021, the president said he was told he should continue to receive communion.
Biden spoke to Meloni on Friday and did not respond to reporters’ shouted questions about whether he could accept a G7 statement without mentioning abortion.
A senior administration official, faced with reports of a fight over whether abortion would be mentioned in the final communique and pressure from Meloni to keep it out, responded: “I can tell you that the G-7 communique will be agreed upon by consensus by all the G-7. -7 countries.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
