Dominated by Republican judges, it now gives states the possibility of banning abortion.
Washington Correspondent
The Supreme Court announced Friday morning the overturning of the Roe v Wade decision, which had guaranteed abortion as a constitutional right in the United States since 1973. By a six-to-three majority, the Court upheld a Mississippi law banning abortion after 15 weeks, ending the ruling that allowed abortions performed before the fetus was viable outside the womb, estimated at the time between 24 and 28 weeks of pregnancy.
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The judges held that the Roe v Wade case, and another case, Planned Parenthood v Casey, which upheld it in 1992, were based on a biased legal interpretation, the United States Constitution not specifically mentioning the right to abortion. “The Roe v Wade judgment was obviously wrong from the start”wrote Judge Samuel Alito, who signed the majority opinion of the Court. “His logic was particularly weak, and the decision had disastrous consequences. Far from providing a national solution to the abortion issue, it has inflamed debate and deepened divisions…This Court cannot provide a final solution to a particularly acrimonious national controversy by imposing its rule and telling people to move on. »
“Abortion presents a profound moral question. We consider that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. It does not prohibit the citizens of each state from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority to themselves. We are now reversing those decisions and returning that authority to the people and their elected representatives.”concluded the judge.
The loss of power, control and dignity will be immense
Judges Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan
In their dissenting opinion, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan strongly criticized the decision of their conservative colleagues. “With sadness, for this Court, but more so, for the millions of American women who today lost fundamental constitutional protection, we declare our dissent.they wrote. Taking away a woman’s right to choose whether or not to pursue a pregnancy does not mean that no choice is made. This means that a majority of today’s Court has taken that choice away from women and given it to the States… Women have relied on Roe vs. Wade and Casey for almost fifty years. Many have never known anything else… The loss of power, control and dignity will be immense. »
They also predicted that the decision to overturn a nearly half-century-old precedent bodes ill for respect for the legal system as a whole.
A debate that has become impossible
This decision, the most important made by the Supreme Court in decades, is one of the rare cases where the highest court has reversed a previous decision, removing a constitutional right it had previously created. The last precedent had been the cancellation of segregation.
Roe vs. Wade was overturned by a five-to-three vote, with the presiding judge, Chief Justice John Roberts not joining the majority, stipulating that he only favored upholding the Mississippi law. , but without revoking Roe vs. Wade.
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This decision of the Supreme Court does not mean the pure and simple prohibition of abortion, but it makes it up to the States of the union to legislate as they see fit on the subject. Half of the fifty American states intend to maintain the legality of abortion, and have already adopted laws guaranteeing it. Democratic states, such as California or New York, have made commitments in this direction. The other half, on the other hand, have adopted or are preparing to vote on restrictions on the legal duration of abortion, and to regulate the procedure more strictly. In Missouri, South Dakota or Georgia, clinics closed one after the other on Friday.
The issue had for decades become one of the most divisive topics in American politics, and debate between activists on both sides had long since become near impossible. The Supreme Court ruling in 1973 guaranteed access to abortion as a constitutional right in the name of privacy.
“Outrageous and heartbreaking”
In the 1980s, the measure had federated against it a conservative current believing that the Court had invented rights not appearing in the Constitution, thus usurping elected officials the power to legislate. Determined to replace one by one the judges of the Court by supporters of a more literal reading of the Constitution, this movement ended up winning forty-nine years later by nullifying Roe vs. Wade altogether.
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The game of successive presidential nominations has sometimes been aided by chance, such as the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the final weeks of Donald Trump’s term. The maneuvers of the Republicans in the Senate, which prevented Obama from nominating his candidate during the last year of his mandate, while allowing Trump to place his a few weeks before leaving the White House, also played a crucial role. The appointment of Amy Coney Barrett in September 2020 thus tipped the Supreme Court since dominated by six conservative judges against three progressives.
On Friday, former Republican Vice President Mike Pence warmly welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision, saying it has “corrected a historical error” revoking the right to abortion, “thrown into the dustbin of history”. ” It’s God’s will “, said Donald Trump. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives, for her part deplored “a scandalous and heartbreaking judgment”. US President Joe Biden has regretted a “tragic mistake”, result of a “extremist ideology”.
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