An extremely restrictive law on the right to abortion came into force on Wednesday in Florida and US President Joe Biden holds his Republican opponent Donald Trump responsible for this “nightmare”.
The former American president regularly congratulates himself on being at the origin of the spectacular reversal of jurisprudence of the Supreme Court in June 2022.
The institution, to which he had given a very conservative composition, then shattered federal protection of the right to abortion, returning responsibility to the states.
“Today, an extremist abortion ban goes into effect in Florida, banning abortion before many women even know they are pregnant,” Biden said in a statement.
US Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting Republican-led state Florida to deliver a speech criticizing Mr Trump as a ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy came into force.
Last week Joe Biden, 81, visited this southeastern state, one of the most populous in the country, which twice voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump.
Democrats are trying to make abortion one of the key issues in the 2024 presidential election, believing that it is a way to win votes against Donald Trump.
“Monitored and punished”
Since Wednesday, Florida has banned any voluntary termination of pregnancy after six weeks, compared to fifteen weeks previously.
Before Wednesday, Florida was a refuge for women in the southeast of the United States, a region where bans or restrictions have multiplied.
Kamala Harris, 59-year-old vice-president, first woman, and first African-American and Asian-American person in this position, has increased her trips and declarations on this theme in recent months.
In her speech, delivered in Jacksonville on Wednesday, she is expected to characterize the bans in Florida and 20 other states as “Trump’s abortion bans.”
“This ban applies to many women before they even know they are pregnant, which tells us that the extremists who wrote this ban don’t even know how a woman’s body works. Or they don’t care,” she must say, according to extracts published by her campaign team.
Ms. Harris is also expected to criticize the statements of Donald Trump who, in an interview published Tuesday in the magazine Timesaid states could monitor women’s pregnancies to see if they had abortions despite the ban.
“Under Donald Trump, it would be normal for women to be monitored and punished by the government,” she said.
“Joe Biden and I have a different point of view: we believe that no elected official should come between a woman and a doctor. »
Politically hot topic
The former Republican president maintains an ambiguous policy on the question of abortion. If he regularly boasts of his decisive role in the end of the famous “Roe versus Wade” jurisprudence which protected this right, he is careful not to openly declare his support for a federal ban, demanded by the religious right.
Interviewed by the magazine Time to find out if he would veto such a law in the event of re-election, the 77-year-old tycoon, targeted by numerous criminal proceedings, kicked in.
By going to Florida, Democrats are bringing the issue of abortion rights directly into the stronghold of Donald Trump, who spends most of his time at his Mar-a-Lago resort in the south of this state.
Republican Governor Ron DeSantis is behind the ban on abortion beyond six weeks. He ran unsuccessfully in the Republican primary and signed into law a bill in April 2023 to lower the limit from 15 weeks to six weeks.
In April, the Florida Supreme Court confirmed the entry into force of this law, but at the same time returned the final decision to voters.
The latter will vote in November, at the same time as the presidential and legislative elections, on an amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion in the southeastern state.
The voluntary termination of pregnancy has almost always been a politically hot topic in the United States, although, according to polls, the majority of Americans are in favor of the right to abortion.