White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre condemned, on Saturday September 24, “the potentially catastrophic, dangerous and unacceptable consequences” of a decision taken on Friday by the courts in Arizona, which, according to the American media, reactivated a legislation of the XIXe century almost totally prohibiting abortion.
“If this decision is confirmed, health personnel will risk up to five years in prison if they fulfill their duty of care; survivors of rape and incest would be forced to bear the children of their attackers; and women [enceintes] with health problems would face terrible risks”assured Karine Jean-Pierre in a press release.
Kellie Johnson, judge for Pima County in Arizona, rendered a decision on Friday that caused a stir in the United States, where access to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion), which has always been a politically hot topic, is in the spotlight. center of the campaign for the legislative elections in November.
Biden hopes to mobilize voters
The judge relies in her judgment on a recent decision of the very conservative American Supreme Court, which dynamited, at the end of June, the right to abortion that its jurisprudence guaranteed since 1973 on all the American territory.
The Republican governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, said that he considered that following this reversal of jurisprudence, that it was a law passed to ban abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, which would preempt previous texts, but there is no consensus on this interpretation. The judge, she, considered that the decision of the high court made a clean sweep, and returned the law in the matter to what it was before 1973.
This has the consequence, believe several American media, to reinstate extremely restrictive texts dating from 1864 and 1901 – before American women had the right to vote and even before this Western state officially joined, in 1912, the United States.
Several conservative American states have implemented total or partial abortion bans after the Supreme Court’s decision. The Democratic Party, represented by President Joe Biden, hopes to mobilize voters to defend access to abortion at the polls, during the midterm elections in November, which will partially renew the Senate and completely renew the House of Representatives.