In the arsenal of political weapons that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are wielding in the American presidential arena, abortion rights have become just another divisive issue, brandished with the simple and cynical objective of galvanizing each side’s troops.
The intentions of the Democratic president are certainly imbued with a humanity of which the former Republican president has repeatedly shown himself to be devoid, but the fact remains that behind the scenes of this disastrous spectacle, the lives of thousands of women are turned upside down, sometimes even threatened, as if their most basic health was now only worthy of being war munitions.
In a recent interview with New York TimesHillary Clinton took the liberty of reminding her political family that her warnings about the threat to access to abortion posed by the election of Donald Trump eight years ago had been blindly ignored, only to become reality on June 24, 2022.
President Joe Biden is now denouncing on all platforms that the invalidation of the decree Roe v. Wadetwo years ago, was only made possible by the appointment of three Supreme Court justices by Donald Trump. The former Republican president, anxious not to alienate the most moderate, is trying to wash his hands of it by leaving it to the freedom of the states to legislate for the future. While continuing to court the religious right in other ways, Mr. Trump having welcomed the obligation voted by Louisiana to display the 10 commandments in all classrooms — this law ensuring that children will be able to “look and see what God says is good and what he says is bad,” explained its Republican instigator, Dodie Horton. Even Margaret Atwood had not imagined such a scenario in her most terrifying dystopias.
Hillary Clinton’s dark observation is eerily accurate. In the shadow of these sterile debates, the damage is done.
Two years after the invalidation of Roe v. Wadethe number of abortions recorded in the United States reached a 10-year high, having jumped by 11% between 2020 and 2023. This figure, however, hides the insidious consequences of the war waged against women by states that have completely (14) or very strongly (7) prohibited access to them.
Because in neighboring states, their number has jumped by an average of 38%, with one in five women having to travel to access an elective termination of pregnancy, double the number just four years ago. So many women who have to travel hundreds, even thousands of kilometers, without having the financial means for some, or the flexibility to take time off work for others.
No less than 5% of the already rare abortion clinics have closed their doors and 11% of obstetrician-gynecologists practicing in a state that has completely banned abortion have gone elsewhere, leaving behind “care deserts”, lists the Institute. Guttmacher of reproductive health research. And two thirds of abortions are now caused by the abortion pill, more easily accessible, but not without risk, and which remains in the crosshairs of the anti-choice cabal.
Added to these anonymous statistics are the tragic stories of women who were rebuffed in the emergency room only to return in critical condition following a treatable medical complication or after being forced to miscarry or give birth alone in their car or elsewhere.
Rather than reassuring all those who fear suffering the same fate, or worse, Democrats and Republicans are taking their battle to the Senate, refusing even to agree to protect in vitro fertilization, which has been made precarious by the Alabama Supreme Court, which has granted frozen embryos the status of “unborn child.”
Abortion and reproductive freedom are fortunately not under such attack in Canada. This, however, does not prevent them from also being used here as a partisan weapon. Not without reason, since the president of the conservative “pro-life caucus”, Arnold Viersen, presented for a 19e times last month, a petition demanding that Canada regulate abortion by law. “This is not a solitary fight,” he also said of his party’s social conservative movement.
Pierre Poilievre may try to allay concerns, by insisting that a government under his leadership would not adopt a law in this sense, this determination of 40% of his elected anti-choice representatives – through petitions, motions or of bills — keeps certain fears alive. Which Justin Trudeau’s Liberals are jubilant to seize, even if it means erring on the side of excess.
After all, the scarecrow method, especially when it is not unfounded, has proven its electoral effectiveness many times, in Canada as in the United States. But there are issues that should never be belittled in this way. Nothing justifies women’s lives being held hostage in this way by their political leaders.