Right to abortion | Major day of mobilization in several American cities

(Washington) “Hands off our bodies! “: Tens of thousands of people demonstrated on Saturday in the United States to defend the right to abortion, threatened by the Supreme Court which seems ready to go back, 50 years after its historic decision to protect abortion.

Some 450 processions were organized across the country, including large marches in Washington, New York, Chicago, Austin and Los Angeles.

“No one has the right to make a decision about someone else’s body,” Hanna Williamson, a 20-year-old protester in Washington, told AFP. “I fight for the rights of everyone”.

In the crowd, demonstrators held pink signs reading “Hands off our bodies”, others proclaimed “The Supreme Court wants to kill women”, “Make the Court have abortions” and a large banner “Our bodies, our abortions was placed in front of the procession.

Viesha Floyd, 31, says she is protesting “for women of generations to come”.

“When it comes to women, mind your own business,” she told members of Congress who oppose a federal law protecting abortion.

In the capital, the parade of several thousand people ended in front of the imposing white marble building housing the Supreme Court, protected by a fence.

In New York, the procession of some 3,000 people was led by Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as city attorney Letitia James. Mayor Eric Adams was also in the crowd.

Anger

They were 5,000 in Houston, Texas, according to organizers, and a thousand in Louisville, Kentucky, a conservative southern state where only two Planned Parenthood clinics perform abortions.

Several thousand people also demonstrated in Los Angeles.

Even if it is supported by a majority of the population, according to recent polls, the right to abortion has been a very divisive social issue since the historic “Roe v. Wade” of January 1973, which protects the right of American women to terminate their pregnancies.

In early May, the Politico news site revealed a draft ruling from the staunchly conservative Supreme Court that will grant US states the right to ban or allow abortions if passed as is. .

She must make her decision by the summer on a Mississippi law limiting the legal deadlines for abortion, already restricted in 23 states. If the Court agreed with this conservative state, twenty others promised to make abortion illegal, some even in cases of rape or incest.

This would force women to travel thousands of miles to get abortions.

For Allison Easter, 58 and demonstrating in New York, conservatives want “power and control”.

“Many people with traditional values ​​are afraid of women who can make a choice with their own bodies,” she told AFP.

” Resist ”

“People say it’s a religious issue, but if you look at what they did in the name of religion, it’s not true,” she adds.

If the judgment is overturned, “it will be horrible” predicted to AFP Linda Coffee, who represented Jane Roe at the time, and who today castigates a “very vocal minority” of opponents to abortion. .

The elected Democrats in Congress have promised to protect the right to abortion in the states where they have a majority.

“We will resist and we will win, we will fight until victory, America is with us,” Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, told AFP.

The House of Representatives passed a law last fall guaranteeing access to abortion throughout the country, but this text is blocked in the Senate, where the Democrats do not have a sufficient majority.

Support also comes from the economic world, which has long avoided this subject. More and more young business leaders are taking a stand for the right to abortion.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also warned of “very damaging economic consequences” if women’s “right to decide when, and if, they want to have children” were undermined.