The Supreme Court of the United States, profoundly overhauled by Donald Trump, will host a battle on Wednesday that could spell the end of the right to abortion in half of the country.
Its nine judges, including six Conservatives, will review a law passed in 2018 by the state of Mississippi that prohibits women from having an abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The law has been blocked by federal courts because it violates the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court: the latter, in a landmark 1973 judgment named “Roe v. Wade ”, recognized the right of women to have an abortion and specified in 1992 that it applied as long as the fetus is not viable, ie around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.
After these setbacks, authorities in Mississippi, a conservative and religious South American state, turned to higher jurisdiction. By accepting their appeal, she implied that she was ready to review her copy, at least on the criterion of “viability”.
Mississippi now asks him to go further and seize this opportunity to go back completely. “Nothing in the text of the Constitution, its structure, history or traditions supports a right to abortion,” wrote its representatives in an argument sent to the High Court before the hearing.
Eighteen conservative states have lent their support, along with hundreds of elected officials from the Republican Party, the Catholic Church and anti-abortion groups, some of whom have spent millions of dollars on advertising campaigns for the momentous moment. .
“The Waterloo of Roe”
All these actors believe that their hour has come after half a century of judicial and political struggle.
“Roe’s Waterloo finally seems within reach,” Tory commentator Hugh Hewitt praised in the pages of the Washington Post, while anti-abortion organization March for Life said in a statement, “to hope and pray ”for“ a historic turn in favor of the most vulnerable ”.
They are galvanized by the arrival at the Supreme Court of three judges appointed by former President Donald Trump, who during his 2016 campaign had promised to choose magistrates opposed to abortion.
Their influence was already felt on September 1, when the temple of American law refused, for procedural reasons, to block the entry into force of a law in Texas which prohibits abortion as early as six weeks of pregnancy. .
He has since reopened the case and expressed his skepticism about the architecture of the text, but his final decision is long overdue and many Texans remain forced to leave their state to have an abortion.
In this context, Shannon Brewer, who runs the only clinic practicing pregnancy terminations in Mississippi, says she is “worried like never before”.
“I can’t even believe that the Court has agreed to examine” the authorities’ appeal … “It shows in which direction we are going,” she says.
Megan and Joe
Due to the already very restrictive legal framework in Mississippi, her clinic, located in the city of Jackson, does not offer abortions after 16 weeks of pregnancy. If the law were validated, it would therefore not have a big concrete impact.
But “that would amount to removing the viability criterion” set in the 1992 judgment, and “without this clear line, States will be able to prohibit abortions at any stage of pregnancy”, notes Julie Rikelman, who will plead before the nine wise men on behalf of this clinic.
A dozen conservative states have already passed laws setting the threshold at 6, 8, 10 or 12 weeks, and are only waiting for the green light from the High Court to bring them into force. A dozen others are ready to follow suit. “Even without saying it”, validating the Mississippi law “would be tantamount to canceling Roe”, concludes the lawyer.
Faced with this “threat”, medical, feminist or civil rights associations wrote to the Court in support of the Jackson clinic, as did hundreds of elected Democrats or 500 high-level athletes, including footballer Megan Rapinoe .
“Forcing a woman to continue a pregnancy against her will is an intrusion into her autonomy, her physical integrity and her access to an equal place in society”, also pleaded the government of Democratic President Joe Biden.
The Supreme Court must render its decision before the end of June 2022.