Katie Barnett passes between the tables in the village hall in Southampton, a northern suburb of Philadelphia, on Sunday, May 15. She thanks the hundreds of supporters who came to support her candidacy for the United States Senate for the Republican Party primary. No mention of her position on abortion in her remarks. But everyone, like Richard, T-shirt with his likeness and Trump cap, knows his personal story: “Katie Barnett’s mother was unfortunately raped when she was eleven years old and she was born out of that rape. Her mother didn’t have an abortion. And so she’s pro-life.”
>>> In Paris, American women demonstrate for the right to abortion in the United States: “My own mother had an illegal abortion 50 years ago and almost died”
Abortion, authorized in Pennsylvania up to 24 weeks of pregnancy, again divides the country, pro and anti-abortion multiplying demonstrations in recent weeks. At the origin of this mobilization, the leak of a project of the Supreme Court which plans to reconsider the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy, yet guaranteed by a case law of 1973. If the text was voted, the highest legal authority of the country could leave the choice to each State to legislate at its convenience on this subject.
Hymn, prayer… Welcome to this multi-purpose shed in Lititz, Lancaster County, in the middle of Amish country, this religious community that refuses technical progress. We came here to listen to another Republican candidate, businessman Dave McCormick, who also doesn’t talk about the Supreme Court leaks on abortion.
Diana, Catholic — like one in five adults in Pennsylvania — hopes the topic won’t split her camp: “I think this leak was planned as a way to get the left to come together, to get people to go out and vote. They’re saying the gay community will be next. It’s funny that there’s been a leaked just before these primaries.” All of this serves, she says, to distract from the number one problem, inflation.
For Rud, abortion embarrasses a good portion of Republican voters. Hence the discretion of the candidates: “I think there’s a good percentage of Republicans who aren’t necessarily strongly pro-abortion but who have a problem with telling women what they can or can’t do”. Trump lost Pennsylvania by 80,000 votes in the last presidential election. It is one of the states that could determine which party controls the Senate in Washington after the midterm elections in November.
United States: the right to abortion in the campaign for the mid-term elections – Report by Sébastien Paour
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