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      For Catherine, Living a Public Life in a Public Body, Privacy is Illusory

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      To be clear, there is nothing private about having cancer. A diagnosis requires referrals and a bewildering number of scans and tests. There are ultrasounds, MRIs, PET scans; colonoscopies, bronchoscopies, endoscopies. There are needle biopsies, razor biopsies, or liquid biopsies. Most of the tests require getting naked, or mostly naked, beneath a robe, sometimes waiting in a large room full of other terrified strangers also in robes, before presenting oneself to strangers who push, jab, thread and insert tools into or onto body parts that are not normally explored. Frequently, these tests have to be repeated, or different tests ordered, to rule something out.“I’ve been naked in front of so many people in my life at this point. You sort of lose some of that sense of, ‘My body is private,’” said Isabel Blumberg, who is my gynecologist. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019, Blumberg was the first person to call me. She told me that she’d had cancer, too.In the video Kensington Palace released on Friday, Catherine, Princess of Wales, revealed her cancer status after more than six weeks of silence and pleaded for privacy. “We hope that you will understand that, as a family, we now need some time, space and privacy while I complete my treatment,” she said while wringing her thin hands. A princess no doubt bypasses the waiting rooms and receives a level of medical care inaccessible to most. But she cannot evade the intrusions and indignities of cancer — the anxious waiting for pathology reports, the shock of the news, the series of treatment decisions that no young, healthy person has ever imagined having to make. The treatment can feel like a grueling, interminable invasion.Catherine publicly announced her diagnosis in a video released on Friday.BBC Studios, via Getty ImagesAnd because Catherine is a princess, the violations went further: the wild and incessant speculation about what had gone wrong with her body, the alleged unauthorized infiltrations of her medical files, which the London Clinic, where she underwent “major abdominal surgery,” is investigating. “There is no place at our hospital for those who intentionally breach the trust of any of our patients or colleagues,” Al Russell, the clinic’s CEO, said in a statement.Even in health, privacy is difficult for a public figure to attain, and since she married Prince William in 2011, Kate Middleton has lived under a microscope. Her physical body — her legs, her hair, her behind, her clothing — has been scrutinized in the way of every female celebrity but also because of her royal function and role. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Catherine’s Cancer Disclosure Shows Her Lessons From Previous Media Ordeals

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      “They know they can’t control the online world,” one expert on the royal family said about the recent spate of revelations about the health of Catherine and King Charles III.For more than two months, Catherine, Princess of Wales, had lost control of her story to a spiral of wild, baseless online rumors. On Friday evening, with a stark two-minute, 13-second video, she set out to reclaim it.To do so, the princess had to deliver the wrenching news that she was battling a life-threatening cancer, the kind of deeply personal disclosure that she and her husband, Prince William, have long resisted.Catherine, 42, made the decision to record the video herself, two people familiar with the planning process said on Saturday. Earlier, she had decided to post an apology for digitally altering a photograph of herself with her three children, which set off a new round of conspiracy theories after it was released on Mother’s Day in Britain.“This was pitch perfect from her perspective,” said Peter Hunt, a former royal correspondent at the BBC. “The fact that it was a video was a rebuke to all those questions about her whereabouts.”In opting to go public this way, Catherine has etched a place for herself in the annals of the British royal family and among the women of the House of Windsor. The video, in its frankness and barely concealed emotion, recalled Queen Elizabeth II’s televised message days after the car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997.Catherine seemed to be modeling herself on Elizabeth, whose video was intended to douse another media firestorm, over whether she and the royal family had not displayed appropriate grief after Diana’s death. It also set her apart from Diana, who was ultimately a victim of the media currents that swirled around her.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Princess Kate’s Cancer Diagnosis Plunges Royal Family Into Uncertainty

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      First King Charles and now Catherine, Princess of Wales, are facing grave health concerns, stretching an already slimmed-down monarchy.In a video statement, Catherine, Princess of Wales, said that she had been diagnosed with cancer and started chemotherapy.BBC StudiosCatherine, Princess of Wales, has been diagnosed with cancer and has begun chemotherapy, she announced on Friday, putting a grim coda on months of rumors about her condition and plunging Britain’s royal family into deep uncertainty as two of its most senior figures grapple with grave health concerns.Her diagnosis follows that of King Charles III, who announced his own cancer diagnosis and treatment in early February. Like the king, Catherine, 42, did not specify what type of cancer she had, nor what her prognosis was.Speaking in a prerecorded video released on Friday evening, Catherine said, “It has been an incredibly tough couple of months for our entire family” as she described having major abdominal surgery in January and then learning through subsequent tests that she had a form of cancer.Looking fatigued but determined to express hope about her recovery, Catherine said she and her husband, Prince William, were helping their three children, George, Charlotte, and Louis, cope with having a sick mother.“This of course came as a huge shock,” Catherine said, “and William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family. As you can imagine, this has taken time.”“We hope that you will understand that, as a family, we now need some time, space and privacy while I complete my treatment,” said Catherine, who wore a simple striped sweater and sat on a bench, against a backdrop of early spring flowers, in the video, which was recorded by BBC Studios on Wednesday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Airbnb Bans All Indoor Security Cameras

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      Widespread use of indoor security cameras has raised concerns about privacy in vacation rentals, hotels, public bathrooms, locker rooms and on cruise ships.Airbnb said this week that it was banning the use of all indoor security cameras in its listings worldwide, an update to its current policy allowing the devices to be installed in common areas such as hallways and living rooms.In an statement on Monday, the company said that most of the listings on its site do not have indoor security cameras, but that it was making privacy a priority.Previously, security cameras were allowed in common areas so long as hosts disclosed them to guests before booking. They had to be visible, not hidden, and were not allowed in sleeping areas or bathrooms. Airbnb said the policy update, which takes effect April 30, prohibits security cameras anywhere inside the properties, even if they are visible.It was not immediately clear why the company made the change, but the widespread use of indoor security cameras has raised concerns about privacy in vacation rentals, hotels, public bathrooms, locker rooms and on cruise ships.Headlines and internet forums have long been rife with reports of unscrupulous vacation rental hosts accused of spying on guests with secret cameras hidden inside clocks, smoke detectors, outlets and other ordinary objects.Juniper Downs, Airbnb’s head of community policy and partnerships, said in the statement that the changes had been made in consultation with guests, hosts and privacy experts.“Our goal was to create new, clear rules that provide our community with greater clarity about what to expect on Airbnb,” she said. The company is one of the biggest players in the short-term rental market, with more than 7 million listings in over 100,000 cities worldwide.Airbnb will continue to allow outdoor security cameras, noise decibel monitors and doorbell cameras, it said, because they are an effective way to monitor security and prevent guests from throwing unauthorized parties.But hosts will be required to disclose the presence of such cameras and their general location before guests book, and the devices cannot be used to monitor areas where there is an expectation of privacy, such as an enclosed outdoor shower or sauna.As the use of consumer surveillance devices grows, many travelers and others are using techniques to figure out whether they are being watched, such as searching for inexplicable lights or holes in objects that may house a camera lens. More

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      ‘New text, same problems’: inside the fight over child online safety laws

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      Sharp divisions between advocates for children’s safety online have emerged as a historic bill has gathered enough votes to pass in the US Senate. Amendments to the bill have appeased some former detractors who now support the legislation; its fiercest critics, however, have become even more entrenched in their demands for changes.The Kids Online Safety Act (Kosa), introduced more than two years ago, reached 60 backers in the Senate mid-February. A number of human rights groups still vehemently oppose the legislation, underscoring ongoing divisions among experts, lawmakers and advocates over how to keep young people safe online.“The Kids Online Safety Act is our best chance to address social media’s toxic business model, which has claimed far too many children’s lives and helped spur a mental health crisis,” said Josh Golin, the executive director of the children’s online safety group Fairplay.Opponents say alterations to the bill are not enough and that their concerns remain unchanged.“A one-size-fits-all approach to kids’ safety won’t keep kids safe,” said Aliya Bhatia, a policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “This bill still rests on the premise that there is consensus around the types of content and design features that cause harm. There isn’t, and this belief will limit young people from exercising their agency and accessing the communities they need to online.”What is the Kids Online Safety Act?Sponsored by the Connecticut Democrat Richard Blumenthal and the Tennessee Republican Marsha Blackburn, Kosa would be the biggest change to American tech legislation in decades. The bill would require platforms like Instagram and TikTok to mitigate online dangers via design changes or opt-outs of algorithm-based recommendations, among other measures. Enforcement would demand much more fundamental modifications to social networks than current regulations require.When it was first introduced in 2022, Kosa prompted an open letter signed by more than 90 human rights organizations united in strong opposition. The groups warned the bill could be “weaponized” by conservative state attorneys general – who were charged with determining what content is harmful – to censor online resources and information for queer and trans youth or people seeking reproductive healthcare.In response to the critiques, Blumenthal amended the bill, notably shifting some enforcement decisions to the Federal Trade Commission rather than state attorneys general. At least seven LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations that previously spoke out against the bill dropped their opposition citing the “considerable changes” to Kosa that “significantly mitigate the risk of it being misused to suppress LGBTQ+ resources or stifle young people’s access to online communities”, including Glaad, the Human Rights Campaign and the Trevor Project.To the critics who now support Kosa, the amendments by Blumenthal solved the legislation’s major issues. However, the majority of those who signed the initial letter still oppose the bill, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, and the ACLU.“New bill text, same problems,” said Adam Kovacevich, chief executive of the tech industry policy coalition the Chamber of Progress, which is supported by corporate partners including Airbnb, Amazon, Apple and Snap. “The changes don’t address a lot of its potential abuses.” Snap and X, formerly Twitter, have publicly supported Kosa.Is Kosa overly broad or a net good?Kovacevich said the latest changes fail to address two primary concerns with the legislation: that vague language will lead social media platforms to over-moderate to restrict their liability, and that allowing state attorneys general to enforce the legislation could enable targeted and politicized content restriction even with the federal government assuming more of the bill’s authority.The vague language targeted by groups that still oppose the bill is the “duty of care” provision, which states that social media firms have “a duty to act in the best interests of a minor that uses the platform’s products or services” – a goal subject to an enforcer’s interpretation. The legislation would also require platforms to mitigate harms by creating “safeguards for minors”, but with little direction as to what content would be deemed harmful, opponents argue the legislation is likely to encourage companies to more aggressively filter content – which could lead to unintended consequences.“Rather than protecting children, this could impact access to protected speech, causing a chilling effect for all users and incentivizing companies to filter content on topics that disproportionately impact marginalized communities,” said Prem M Trivedi, policy director at the Open Technology Institute, which opposes Kosa.Trivedi said he and other opponents fear that important but charged topics like gun violence and racial justice could be interpreted as having a negative impact on young users, and be filtered out by algorithms. Many have expressed concern that LGBTQ+-related topics would be targeted by conservative regulators, leading to fewer available resources for young users who rely on the internet to connect with their communities. Blackburn, the bill’s sponsor, has previously stated her intention to “protect minor children from the transgender [sic] in this culture and that influence”.An overarching concern among opponents of the bill is that it is too broad in scope, and that more targeted legislation would achieve similar goals with fewer unintended impacts, said Bhatia.“There is a belief that there are these magic content silver bullets that a company can apply, and that what stands between a company applying those tools and not applying those tools is legislation,” she said. “But those of us who study the impact of these content filters still have reservations about the bill.”Many with reservations acknowledge that it does feature broadly beneficial provisions, said Mohana Mukherjee, visiting faculty at George Washington University, who has studied technology’s impact on teenagers and young adults. She said the bill’s inclusion of a “Kosa council” – a coalition of stakeholders including parents, academic experts, health professionals and young social media users to provide advice on how best to implement the legislation – is groundbreaking.“It’s absolutely crucial to involve young adults and youth who are facing these problems, and to have their perspective on the legislation,” she said.Kosa’s uncertain futureKosa is likely to be voted on in the Senate this session, but other legislation targeting online harms threatens its momentum. A group of senators is increasingly pushing a related bill that would ban children under the age of 13 from social media. Its author, Brian Schatz, has requested a panel that would potentially couple the bill with Kosa. Blumenthal, the author of Kosa, has cautioned that such a move could slow the passage of both bills and spoke out against the markup.“We should move forward with the proposals that have the broadest support, but at the same time, have open minds about what may add value,” he said, according to the Washington Post. “This process is the art of addition not subtraction often … but we should make sure that we’re not undermining the base of support.”The bill’s future in the House is likewise unclear. Other bills with similar purported goals are floating around Congress, including the Invest in Child Safety Act – a bill introduced by the Democratic senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and the representatives Anna G Eshoo and Brian Fitzpatrick – which would invest more than $5bn into investigating online sexual abusers.With so much legislation swirling around the floors of Congress, it’s unclear when – or if – a vote will be taken on any of them. But experts agree that Congress has at least begun trying to bolster children’s online safety.“This is an emotionally fraught topic – there are urgent online safety issues and awful things that happen to our children at the intersection of the online world and the offline world,” said Trivedi. “In an election year, there are heightened pressures on everyone to demonstrate forward movement on issues like this.” More

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      A.I. Is Making the Sexual Exploitation of Girls Even Worse

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      On Tuesday, Kat Tenbarge and Liz Kreutz of NBC News reported that several middle schoolers in Beverly Hills, Calif., were caught making and distributing fake naked photos of their peers: “School officials at Beverly Vista Middle School were made aware of the ‘A.I.-generated nude photos’ of students last week, the district superintendent said in a letter to parents. The superintendent told NBC News the photos included students’ faces superimposed onto nude bodies.”I had heard about this kind of thing happening to high school girls, which is horrible enough. But the idea of such young children being dehumanized by their classmates, humiliated and sexualized in one of the places they’re supposed to feel safe, and knowing those images could be indelible and worldwide, turned my stomach.I’m not a technophobe and have, in the past, been somewhat skeptical about the outsize negative impact of social media on teen girls. And while I still think the subject is complicated, and that the research doesn’t always conclude that there are unfavorable mental health effects of social media use on all groups of young people, the increasing reach of artificial intelligence adds a new wrinkle that has the potential to cause all sorts of damage. The possibilities are especially frightening when the technology is used by teens and tweens, groups with notoriously iffy judgment about the permanence of their actions.I have to admit that my gut reaction to the Beverly Hills story was rage — I wanted the book thrown at the kids who made those fakes. But I wanted to hear from someone with more experience talking to teens and thinking deeply about the adolescent relationship with privacy and technology. So I called Devorah Heitner, the author of “Growing Up in Public: Coming of Age in a Digital World,” to help me step back a bit from my punitive fury.Heitner pointed out that although artificial intelligence adds a new dimension, kids have been passing around digital sexual images without consent for years. According to a 2018 meta-analysis from JAMA Pediatrics, among children in the 12 to 17 age range, “The prevalence of forwarding a sext without consent was 12.0 percent,” and “and the prevalence of having a sext forwarded without consent was 8.4 percent.”In her book, Heitner offers an example in which an eighth-grade girl sends a topless photo to her boyfriend, who circulates it to his friends without her permission. After they broke up, but without her knowledge, “her picture kept circulating, passing from classmate to classmate throughout their middle school,” and then “one afternoon, she opened her school email to find a video with her image with sound effects from a porn video playing with it.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Sues Over Steele Dossier on Russia in London Court

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      Former President Donald J. Trump is arguing that the document known as the Steele dossier was calculated to embarrass him and that it breached data protection laws.Donald J. Trump has claimed in a lawsuit in a London court that Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, inflicted “personal and reputational damage and distress” on him by leaking a dossier detailing unsavory, unproven accounts of links between him and Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign.Lawyers for Mr. Trump argue that Mr. Steele’s firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, breached British data protection laws with the dossier, which triggered a political earthquake when it was published just before Mr. Trump’s inauguration in 2017.The lawsuit, the first filed by Mr. Trump in Britain related to the dossier, could offer the former president more favorable legal terrain than the United States. Last year, a federal judge in Florida threw out his lawsuit claiming that Mr. Steele, as well as Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee, was involved in a concerted plot to spread false information about Mr. Trump’s ties to Russia.In a court filing last month, Mr. Trump’s lawyers said he was “compelled to explain to his family, friends, and colleagues that the embarrassing allegations about his private life were untrue. This was extremely distressing” for him, the filing said, asserting that Mr. Steele had presented the claims in a “sensationalist manner” that was “calculated to cause tremendous embarrassment” to Mr. Trump. He is asking for unspecified compensation.The High Court judge Matthew Nicklin has scheduled a two-day hearing on Oct. 16 and 17, at which arguments will be heard and lawyers for Mr. Steele’s firm will move to throw out the case, which was originally filed last November.The dossier’s author, Christopher Steele, center, in 2020. He has accused Mr. Trump of engaging in “frivolous and abusive legal proceedings” in the United States.Victoria Jones/Press Association, via Associated PressIn a witness statement, Mr. Steele accused Mr. Trump of “numerous public attacks upon me and Orbis.” He said the former president had initiated “frivolous and abusive legal proceedings” against him and his firm in the United States, a conclusion echoed by the Florida judge’s ruling.A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to requests for comment, and neither did his British lawyers, while Mr. Steele declined to comment.Mr. Trump’s foray into the British courts comes as he is facing a raft of criminal and civil charges in the United States, on accusations ranging from election interference to inflating the value of his real estate assets — all of which he has denied. He has experienced a string of legal setbacks in courtrooms from Manhattan to South Florida.But in London, Mr. Trump is the plaintiff, and legal experts said his lawyers were trying to seize an advantage from Britain’s comparatively tight controls on personal data. Winning a claim that his data had been compromised, these lawyers said, would be easier than winning a claim of defamation.“It avoids the obvious hurdles of a U.K. defamation claim,” said Jay Joshi, a media lawyer with the London firm Taylor Hampton. These include the statute of limitations for defamation, normally a year, and the fact that the dossier was published in the United States, not Britain. “Trump is clearly seeking some form of vindication,” Mr. Joshi said.In 2020, Aleksej Gubarev, a Russian technology entrepreneur who was cited in the dossier, lost a defamation suit against Mr. Steele. But in another case that year, two Russian oligarchs, Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, won damages of 18,000 pounds ($22,900) each from Mr. Steele’s firm after they argued that allegations about them in the dossier violated data-protection laws.The court ruled that Orbis had “failed to take reasonable steps to verify” claims that Mr. Fridman and Mr. Aven, who controlled Alfa Bank, had made illicit payments to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, though the judge dismissed several other claims.Mr. Trump’s lawyers are making a similar claim that Mr. Steele’s firm did not confirm the claims about him. Among other things, they said, Mr. Trump did not bribe Russian officials to advance his business interests.“The claimant did not engage in unorthodox behavior in Russia and did not act in a way that Russia authorities were provided with material to blackmail him,” the lawyers said. “The personal data is not accurate. Further, the Defendant failed to take all reasonable steps to insure the personal data was accurate.”Mr. Trump is being represented by Hugh Tomlinson, a leading London media lawyer who specializes in defamation, privacy and data protection. Among his former clients is King Charles III, then the Prince of Wales, for whom Mr. Tomlinson argued successfully that a British tabloid should not be allowed to publish his private diaries, which contained astringent comments about the 1997 handover of Hong Kong to China.The Steele dossier grew out of an opposition research effort to dig up information about Mr. Trump, funded by Mrs. Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic Party. Their law firm, Perkins Coie, contracted with a Washington research firm, Fusion GPS, which in turn hired Mr. Steele, an expert on Russia, to research Mr. Trump’s business dealings in the country.Mr. Steele shared some of the memos with the F.B.I. and journalists; they first came to light in January 2017 when Buzzfeed published 35 pages.His findings have been largely discredited by the F.B.I. and others who have investigated Mr. Trump’s relationship to Russia. Relying on anonymous sources, the dossier asserted that there was a “well-developed conspiracy of coordination” between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, and that Russian officials had a blackmail tape of Mr. Trump with prostitutes.For much of his information, Mr. Steele relied on Igor Danchenko, a Russian researcher who told federal investigators that some of the claims were rumors that he had not been able to confirm. Mr. Danchenko was later indicted on a charge of misleading federal investigators, but he was ultimately acquitted.The F.B.I. concluded that one of the most explosive allegations in the dossier — that Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, had met with Russian officials in Prague during the 2016 campaign — was false.In his witness statement, Mr. Steele said he wrote the memos on a computer that was not connected to a network and was equipped with security that prohibited any third party from extracting data stored on it. He also said that Orbis no longer held any copy of the dossier on its systems by the end of the first week of January 2017.Mr. Steele has not denied sharing the dossier with journalists. But he rejected the contention that he has sought to promote its contents since then.“I declined to provide any media interviews for three and a half years after the publication of the dossier by Buzzfeed, despite being asked multiple times by major international media organizations,” he testified. “If I had wanted to ‘promote’ the dossier as Mr. Trump suggests, I obviously would have taken up those media opportunities.” More

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      Biden Denounces Abortion Bans, Warning That Privacy Is Next

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      The president sought to galvanize supporters a year after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade as Democrats hope the issue helps them win next year’s elections.President Biden denounced on Friday new restrictions on abortion imposed in Republican-led states in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and warned that the right to privacy, which has been the foundation for other rights like same-sex marriage and access to birth control, could be at risk next if Democrats do not win next year’s elections.Marking Saturday’s anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision eliminating a national right to abortion for women, Mr. Biden decried its “devastating effects,” telling an abortion rights rally that women had been deprived of basic health care and noting that some leading Republicans, not content to leave the issue to the states as they had long advocated, are now seeking a national ban on the procedure.“They’re not stopping here,” said Mr. Biden, who was joined at the rally by his wife, Jill Biden, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff. “Make no mistake, this election is about freedom on the ballot.”The president collected the endorsement of the nation’s leading abortion rights groups, Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood Action Fund and NARAL Pro-Choice America. While the endorsement was hardly a surprise, the early timing underscored the role that Democrats believe abortion rights will play in next year’s election.Polls show that support for legalized abortion has risen since the Dobbs decision. Democrats argue that it helped them avoid a Republican wave during last year’s midterm elections — “you all showed up and beat the hell out of them,” as Mr. Biden put it — and could be critical to retaining the White House and recapturing the House next year. Republicans are at odds with each other over how much to emphasize the issue, with some worried that it will only hurt them in a general election. But some progressive activists have privately expressed frustration that Mr. Biden has not made it more of a public priority until now.Abortion has long been an uncomfortable issue for Mr. Biden, who has cited his Catholic faith as his views have shifted over the years. While a young senator, he declared that the Supreme Court had gone “too far” in the Roe decision and later voted for a constitutional amendment allowing states to individually overturn the ruling before reversing himself. He supported the so-called Hyde amendment prohibiting the use of federal funds for abortion, including through Medicaid, until the 2020 campaign, when he changed his mind under pressure from liberals in his party.By contrast, Ms. Harris has unabashedly joined the battle for abortion rights since Roe was reversed, becoming by all accounts the administration’s most passionate and effective voice on the issue. At Friday’s event, Laphonza Butler, president of Emily’s List, praised Mr. Biden’s team as “the most pro-choice administration we’ve ever seen” but reserved her most effusive words for Ms. Harris.The rally on Friday, organized with the Democratic National Committee, was part of a series of messaging efforts by the Biden team around the anniversary of the Dobbs ruling. Earlier this week, Dr. Biden hosted a session with women from states that have imposed limits on abortion to highlight the consequences even for those not seeking to end a pregnancy. On Saturday, Ms. Harris will deliver an address on abortion rights in Charlotte, N.C.Mr. Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill on Friday also called attention to the issue. House Democrats led by Representative Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts introduced legislation to require insurance coverage to include abortion care, shield patients and providers from criminal charges, and affirm a legal right to abortion and miscarriage care. The bill has no chance of passing the Republican-controlled House but was meant as a signal to supporters.As he has over the last year, Mr. Biden sought to expand the debate to other privacy-related concerns, ideological ground where he is more comfortable, as he cast Republicans as extremists beyond the question of abortion. The White House announced Friday that in his third executive action in response to the Dobbs decision, he was ordering federal agencies to look for ways to ensure and expand access to birth control.“The idea that I had to do that — I mean, no, really, think about it, think about it,” he told supporters. “I know I’m 198 years old but all kidding aside, think about that. I never, ever thought I’d be signing an executive order protecting the right to contraceptives.”He boasted that he had done more to put women in positions of power than any of his predecessors. In addition to making Ms. Harris the first woman to serve as vice president, he noted that he is the first president to have a majority-woman cabinet, pointed to his appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first Black woman on the Supreme Court and said that he had installed more Black women to federal appeals courts than all of the previous presidents combined.“Look, we made so much progress,” Mr. Biden said. “We can’t let them take us backwards.” More