human tide in New York to defend the right to abortion – Liberation

Thousands of people gathered in lower Manhattan to defend the constitutional right to abortion, threatened by the Supreme Court. –

“Fight, fight!”: several thousand people flocked to New York on Tuesday evening to shout their anger against intentions of the Supreme Court of the United States to overturn the constitutional right to abortion.

It was the very offensive Attorney General of the State of New York, the elected Democrat Letitia James, who sounded the general mobilization in front of thousands of women and men, rather young, gathered in force on a place in the south of Manhattan, home to the Federal Courthouse. In front of a human tide, Mrs. James launched “a call to action”.

The Supreme Court’s draft decision, unveiled Monday evening by the Politico site, is “an alert and now is not the time to remain silent […] We have to get angry”harangued the magistrate by qualifying the defense of the right to abortion “of one of the greatest battles to be waged”.

“We won’t go back, we won’t go back to when we used coat hangers. Never again !” she promised, judging that “the right to control (his) body was a fundamental right”. “Abortion is a human right. Fight, fight, fight!”chanted the crowd.

Many young women held up placards bearing slogans such as “my body, my choice” , “stop the war against women” or “I will have less rights than my mother”.

At the same time, the Republican governor of Oklahoma, in the southern United States, announced that it had signed a law prohibiting abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, one of the most restrictive in the country, while the Supreme Court is preparing to reverse this right at the federal level. This conservative state had been welcoming thousands of Texan women seeking abortions for several months, after the passage of a similar text in this neighboring state.

“A lot of people are going to feel insecure,”explains Lauryn Workman, a 22-year-old African-American, mobilized in New York. For this protester, the violation of the right to abortion in the United States “is not just an issue of reproductive rights, it’s an issue of racial justice, economic justice […] We have to fight on all fronts”.

On Tuesday, Democratic President Joe Biden launched a great political battle to defend this right to abortion, a subject around which America has always been torn and which, following an explosive revelation on the intentions of the Supreme Court, is emerging as a major issue in the legislative elections scheduled for November .

The day after the extraordinary leak in the press of a draft decision of the high court, in which it dynamites the constitutional right to abortion guaranteed throughout the United States since 1973, the president called on his voters to “choose candidates favourable” to the right to abortion during the mid-term ballot. The Supreme Court confirmed the authenticity of this internal document, while emphasizing that it did not represent a decision «finale».

According to this text, the highest judicial body is preparing to cancel its historic judgment «Roe versus Wade»of 1973, guaranteeing women the constitutional right to abort even in the most conservative states, particularly in the south of the country.

As of Monday evening, the authorities of the city and the State of New York, all Democrats, had forcefully defended the right to abortion. Governor Kathy Hochul said in a statement “To all women in this country that New York City and State would always be there for anyone in need of reproductive care, including an abortion.”

–