The State of New York, anchored on the left, wants to engrave in its Constitution the rights to abortion and contraception thanks to a first text of law voted on Friday, in reaction to the questioning of abortion by the Court supreme conservative of the United States.
• Read also: Women less alone to have an abortion in Quebec
• Read also: The US Supreme Court complicates the fight against global warming
The Senate of the fourth most populous state in the country and with a Democratic majority “has adopted an amendment to codify in the Constitution the rights to abortion and contraception”, according to a press release from this assembly which sits in the capital of State, in Albany.
This text, which will still have to be voted on by the other chamber of the local Congress, the Assembly, then be adopted by a popular referendum before coming into force at the earliest in 2024, also provides for the protection of rights related to “gender , disability, sexual orientation, nationality, community or age”.
Engraving the right to abortion in stone in US state constitutions had begun before the Supreme Court’s shock ruling on June 24 that ended the federal legal guarantee of abortion nationwide.
A dozen “progressive” states that claim to be abortion “sanctuaries”, particularly in the northeastern and western United States — Vermont, Maryland, California, Washington — have already done or about to do so.
“The reversal in Roe v. Wade clearly demonstrates that New York State must continue to be at the forefront of the nation for the protection of women and individual rights,” said the Democratic Majority Leader in the New York Senate, quoted in the press release. .
The Roe v. Wade, who had established the right to abortion throughout the United States since 1973, was overturned by a now staunchly conservative Supreme Court, after the appointments of conservative judges decided by former President Donald Trump.
It is now up to the 50 states to decide on abortion. Half of them according to the Guttmacher Institute – especially in the south and the center Republicans, conservatives and religious – have already banned it or are considering doing so.