The Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade, who had legalized the right to abortion at the federal level in the United States since 1973.
A historic decision. On Friday, the US Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade, who in 1973 legalized the right to abortion at the federal level in the United States. The announcement is hardly surprising since last month, the draft of the legal decision was published by the Politico site, a first for the Supreme Court, in which the secrecy of decisions is always respected until the publication of the result. As in the decision leaked last month, conservative judge Samuel Alito justifies this decision by the absence of mention of abortion in the Constitution of 1787 and thus shifts the responsibility to the states. It will result in a ban on abortion, with more or less conditions, in half of the American states. Three states have already adopted “trigger laws”, laws ready to be applied as soon as the Supreme Court’s decision is published: Idaho, Tennessee and Texas. Ten others – Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming – have simple processes (30 day delay, signature of state attorney) but can act extremely quickly.
To read : The right to abortion more than ever in danger in the United States
The ruling released on Friday is a response to a review of a law passed last year in Mississippi, which bans most abortions from the 15th week of pregnancy, except in cases of fatal malformation or risk to the life of pregnant women, one of the many pieces of legislation aimed at reducing or even eliminating the right to abortion in several conservative states in recent years. It was a long-standing strategy of abortion opponents, who in recent years have tested the Supreme Court’s limits on the issue, imposing more and more restrictions until finally getting this back on Roe. v. Wade. Thus, in Mississippi, only one clinic was still able to perform abortions – forcing women who could not afford to go to a more permissive state to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term or to have recourse to a illegal and potentially life-threatening abortion.
“It’s the will of God,” says Trump
This major setback for the emancipation of women is a direct consequence of the composition of the Supreme Court: during his four years in the White House, Donald Trump was able to appoint three judges out of the nine sitting in the highest court of the United States. United. Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett are all conservative judges, whose appointment was seen by opponents of abortion as a victory and the promise of an end to Roe v. Wade. Their confidence is such, as Mary Ziegler, professor of law at the University of Florida Law and an expert on the issue, explained to us last year that “anti-abortion activists are already thinking about the post-Roe and [veulent] ask for the recognition of a right to life, so that the Constitution considers a fetus or an unborn child as a person, who has rights which would make abortion unconstitutional”.
This opens the door to other decisions, “which are made from the same constitutional mould”. As Judge Clarence Thomas wrote in Friday’s decision, he does not rule out reversing other major rulings, such as Obergefell, which legalized marriage for all in 2015, or Griswold, which declared a ban. unconstitutional contraception.
To read : Contraception, marriage for all: the potential consequences of the reversal on Roe v. wade
Quickly after the announcement, Democratic President Joe Biden took the floor to denounce a “tragic error”, the result of an “extremist ideology” mounted for years in conservative circles. “The health and lives of women in this country are now in danger,” he continued, referring to a “sad day” for the country. His predecessor Donald Trump, who after years of pronouncing himself in favor of the right to abortion, declared himself against it in order to seduce a conservative and religious electorate, rejoiced on Fox News: “It’s the will of God”, hammered the billionaire, whose role in the invasion of the Capitol is at the heart of a parliamentary commission of inquiry. In Texas, the Attorney General went even further to welcome this step back: Ken Paxton intends to make June 24 a holiday, “in honor of the 70 million unborn babies killed in utero since 1973”.