In a historic about-face, the very conservative Supreme Court of the United States buried the right to abortion on Friday. A handful of states took the opportunity to immediately ban abortions on their soil.
President Joe Biden has denounced a “tragic mistake” which “puts the health and lives of women at risk”. He called on Americans to stand up for abortion rights during the midterm elections in November.
While clinics in Missouri, South Dakota or Georgia closed their doors one after the other, Democratic states, such as California or New York, have pledged to defend access to abortions on their soil.
On Trump’s record
The judgment published Friday “is one of the most important in the history of the Supreme Court since its creation in 1790”, notes health law professor Lawrence Gostin. “It has already happened that it changes its case law but to establish or restore a right, never to remove it,” he told AFP.
The decision goes against the international trend to liberalize abortions, with progress in countries where the influence of the Catholic Church remains strong, such as Ireland, Argentina, Mexico and Colombia.
Internationally, several voices, including those of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have also deplored the American “backtrack”. In France, Emmanuel Macron regretted the “questioning” of women’s freedoms.
The judgment crowns 50 years of a methodical struggle led by the religious right, for whom it represents a huge victory but not the end of the battle: the movement should continue to mobilize to bring as many states as possible into its camp. or to try to get a federal ban.
It is also part of the record of former President Donald Trump who, during his mandate, profoundly overhauled the Supreme Court by bringing in three conservative magistrates (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett) signatories today of this stop. This decision, “it is the will of God”, welcomed the Republican billionaire on the Fox channel.
“To fight”
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research center that campaigns for access to contraception and abortion in the world, half of the States should ban abortions in the more or less short term. Within hours on Friday, at least seven states, including Missouri, Alabama and Kentucky, immediately made all abortions illegal.
In part of the country, women wishing to have an abortion will therefore be forced to continue their pregnancy, to manage clandestinely, in particular by obtaining abortion pills on the internet, or to travel to other States, where abortions will remain legal.
Anticipating an influx, these states, most often Democrats, took measures to facilitate access to abortion on their soil and the clinics began to shift their resources in personnel and equipment.
But traveling is expensive and the Supreme Court’s ruling will further penalize poor women or women raising children alone, who are over-represented in black and Hispanic minorities, abortion rights advocates say.
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