Aviva Fried (US correspondent) / Photo credits: SPENCER PLATT / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / GETTY IMAGES VIA AFP
Barring any surprises, France should adopt this afternoon the inclusion of voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG) in its Constitution. An approach unlike that of the United States where the right to abortion is suspended on the decisions of conservatives and is no longer even accessible in certain states.
While French parliamentarians have a meeting with History this Monday in Versailles for the inclusion or not of abortion in the Constitution, in the United States, the right to abortion is increasingly threatened, since the decision of the Supreme Court, in 2022, to reverse the decision Roe v. Wade, removing federal protection of abortion. An outcome for the conservatives.
A well-established Conservative strategy
The end of protection of the right to abortion is the result of a strategy put in place over many years. The tactic: enact laws increasingly limiting access to abortion in the most conservative states. In the hope that these laws will be challenged and end up before the Supreme Court, as Mary Ziegler, professor of law at the University of California Davis, explains on PBS.
“The anti-abortion movement wanted to create instability, and then argue that this proved that the right to abortion had to be canceled. And they also needed the right people to sit on the Court,” explains the specialist.
The good people are in particular the three very conservative judges, appointed by Donald Trump, who effectively changed the right to abortion. Now, each American state has its own laws. For example, the very progressive California has chosen, like France, to include the right to abortion in its Constitution. While it is no longer possible to have an abortion in states like Texas. 25% of American women of childbearing age no longer have access to abortion where they live.