US President Joe Biden said the Supreme Court decision overturning the right to an abortion was an exercise in “raw political power” and signed an executive order on Friday to help protect access to services to terminate pregnancies.

Biden, a Democrat, has been under pressure from his own party to take action after the landmark decision last month to overturn Roe v Wade, which upended roughly 50 years of protections for women’s reproductive rights.

The President’s powers are constrained because US states can make laws restricting abortion and access to medication, and the executive order is expected to have a limited impact. “What we’re witnessing isn't a constitutional judgment, it was an exercise in raw political power,” Biden told reporters at the White House after quoting heavily from the dissenting opinion in the ruling.

“We cannot allow an anout-of-control Supreme Court, working in conjunction with extremist elements of the Republican party, to take away freedoms and our personal autonomy,” he said. The White House is not publicly entertaining the idea of reforming the court itself. Reuters