“Women will die” if the Supreme Court of the United States ends the right to abortion, alarmed the prestigious medical journal The Lancet on Friday in an editorial, estimating that the judges will then have “blood on their hands” .
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At the beginning of May, the preliminary draft of a majority decision written by the conservative judge Samuel Alito leaked in the press, questioning the judgment “Roe versus Wade” of 1973, which guarantees women access to abortion , even in the most conservative states.
“The fact is that if the Supreme Court of the United States upholds this draft, women will die,” writes The Lancet in its editorial, published on its site. Alito and his allies will have the blood of women on their hands.
“In the United States, black women have an unintended pregnancy rate that is double that of non-Hispanic white women. And the maternal mortality rate for black women, for which unsafe abortions are an important factor, is almost three times higher than for white women.
“What kind of society has the United States become when a small group of judges are allowed to hurt women, families and their communities, even though they were elected to protect them?” editorial.
The Supreme Court, which has been deeply overhauled by Donald Trump, must render a long-awaited decision before June 30 on a Mississippi law that limits the legal time limits for abortion.
In the leaked draft published by the Politico news site, Samuel Alito writes: “We believe that Roe v. Wade must be annulled” and the right to abortion “is not protected by any provision of the Constitution”.
If this conclusion is accepted by the Court, the United States will return to the situation before 1973 when each state was free to prohibit or authorize abortion.