Republican elected officials in the US state of Louisiana introduced a bill on Wednesday to criminalize abortion as homicide, according to revelations by the Washington Post.
This bill would allow prosecutors to charge patients who resort to abortion. The text intends to give constitutional rights to the fetus “from the moment of fertilization”. Women who choose to have an abortion would then be held criminally responsible for the death of the fetus and therefore risk going to prison.
The text must be presented to the vote of the two parliamentary assemblies of Louisiana before May 12. The state governor, although flat with the Democratic Party, is a staunch opponent of abortion. In 2019, he passed a law that prohibits women from having an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.
According to several experts interviewed by the Washington Post, this new law could also jeopardize in vitro fertilization and emergency contraception.
This Louisiana bill was discussed just days after Politico newspaper revealed the United States Supreme Court justices’ ambition to overturn Roe v. Wade, who protects abortion rights at the federal level. Revelations that led to large demonstrations to defend the right to abortion in Washington. Louisiana also has a “trigger” law that would make abortion illegal following the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
In all, some twenty states out of the fifty could make the decision to abolish the right to abortion if the Supreme Court votes to overturn this ruling, particularly the southern and central states of the United States, and this right could be hampered. or severely restricted in several others.
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