Biden’s Statement on the Failed Abortion Bill Never Uses the Word ‘Abortion’

After the Women’s Health Protection Act, a Democrat-led bill that would in essence codify a national right to abortion, failed its Senate vote today, Joe Biden had a lot to say—well, kind of. The president released a statement condemning Senate Republicans, all of whom voted against the bill along with Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, in which one word was notably absent: abortion. Biden referred to “reproductive health care,” “women’s constitutional rights,” the “right to choose,” and women’s “personal decisions about their own bodies,” but nowhere did the a-word appear. In fact, Biden only recently used the apparently dirty word for the very first time since taking office.