“For those seeking an abortion in this country, know that you are welcome here. The statement from the mayor of New York seems to be taken from a dark science fiction scenario.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
The Supreme Court of the United States had barely buried the right to abortion on Friday morning when the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, opened the doors of his city to the millions of Americans who will soon find themselves chained in what he called “reproductive servitude”.
At the same time, the Attorney General of Texas, Ken Paxton, closed his offices, the heart in the party. June 24, he decreed, would now be a public holiday, to celebrate the historic Supreme Court judgment, but also in memory of the “70 million babies killed in the womb” since Roe v. Wade, in 1973. “Such a thing should never happen again in the United States. »
To hear the Texas prosecutor, this half-century of freedom granted to American women will have been only a tragic error of history, finally corrected, thank God.
Admit that it’s scary. Achievements that we thought were solid and which are gradually fading away. The slide of America, once a bastion of freedom, towards religious obscurantism. Slowly but surely. One Supreme Court decision at a time.
The highest court in the United States is busy. For a week, he has revoked the right to abortion, consecrated the right to bear arms and weakened the wall that separates Church and State. All this while terrifying hearings were being held on what must be called an attempted coup.
We read the news from the United States and we think we are dreaming. We pinch ourselves. No, it’s not science fiction. Suddenly, The Scarlet Maid, by Margaret Atwood, looks less like a dystopian novel than a terrible omen. That of a superpower where democracy is tottering and where women, as always, as everywhere, are the first to pay the price.
Not all Americans will be able to afford to travel to states where abortion clinics are still tolerated. Some will be forced to pursue an unwanted pregnancy, others to manage with the means at hand.
All because a bunch of ideologues have arrogated to themselves the power to decide for women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies.
“The decision whether or not to bear a child is at the heart of a woman’s life, her well-being and her dignity. When the government makes that decision for her, it treats her as less than an adult responsible for her own choices,” former Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in 1993.
Sad irony, it is partly because of her that the country has regressed. Octogenarian, sick, Judge Bader Ginsburg clung to her post, refusing to retire when Barack Obama was in power. She died in 2020, just 46 days before the end of Donald Trump’s term – who rushed to appoint a conservative judge to replace her. He had already appointed two magistrates.
The table was set for a major overhaul of fundamental laws in the United States.
The worst thing is that the majority of Americans don’t want all that. According to a recent SCOTUSPoll poll, 62% opposed the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Donald Trump was not against abortion either. What interested him was power. So he negotiated with the religious right: give me your support, I’ll give you the Supreme Court. It worked better than all the prayers.
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But the price of this unholy alliance is incalculable. More than ever, the legitimacy of the Supreme Court is flayed. The highest court in the country seems highly politicized. Disconnected from the people. And even elected officials.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court struck down a New York state law requiring a “good reason” to carry a gun in public. The decision came the same day that elected officials from both parties finally managed to agree on a law aimed at restricting access to firearms!
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled that the state of Maine cannot exclude religious schools from school funding. Warning that the majority justices were increasingly forcing states “to subsidize indoctrination with taxpayer dollars,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented “with growing concern about where this Court will take us.” afterwards “.
This concern hovers like a dark cloud over Washington: where will the Supreme Court stop, transformed into a political tool at the service of the most reactionary fringe of the Republican Party? What will be the next challenged right?
Perhaps the right to contraception. consensual same-sex relationships. Or else gay marriage. Judge Clarence Thomas suggested that these three rights could disappear, in a separate opinion in support of the majority.
I’m afraid that’s no longer alarmism. This Court, determined to meddle in what happens in the bedrooms of Americans, will not stop there.