Words and slogans, failing to be able to really act for the moment: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris promised Sunday to fight for the right to abortion, 50 years to the day after a famous judgment of the Supreme Court.
Several events have been held across the country to commemorate ” Roe v. wade “, a case law dismantled last June by the highest American court, now fiercely conservative and which put an end to the constitutional right to voluntary termination of pregnancy (abortion).
In New York, about 300 people marched, with the same slogans as women in the 1970s, like “My body, my choice” (“My body, my choice”).
“Today we should celebrate the 50th anniversary of “Roe v. Wade” said the Democratic president in a tweet.
“Instead, Republican “MAGA” officials (i.e. acquired by former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” program, editor’s note) went to war against the right of women to take decisions about their health themselves, ”denounced Joe Biden.
“How dare they? »
Vice President Kamala Harris has joined in this attack.
“How dare they? she exclaimed during a speech delivered in Florida, referring to those Republican officials who want to legislate at the federal level to restrict or even eliminate the right to abortion everywhere in the United States.
She also castigated “the laws designed by extremists in certain states, including Florida” to restrict access to abortion.
Florida, whose governor Ron DeSantis is a rising star of the American right, prohibits abortion after 15 weeks.
In total, around twenty states governed by Republicans have rushed into the breach opened by the Supreme Court, to which Donald Trump has given a resolutely conservative composition.
The family planning organization Planned Parenthood, noting that the majority of Americans are in favor of the right to abortion, estimates that one in three women in the United States lives in a state that has taken such measures.
Its president, Alexis McGill Johnson, said that “what is happening to patients and medical staff is terrible, but it also revitalizes our movement. […] We will be there and we will fight. Every day. »
” Non-negotiable “
In his tweets on Sunday, Joe Biden insists that “women’s right to choose is not negotiable” and calls on Congress to pass a law that would take up the terms of the 1973 judgment, by imposing itself on conservative states.
“We will not back down. And we know that the battle will not be over until we guarantee this right” to abortion in a federal text, said Kamala Harris for her part.
But neither the 80-year-old Democrat nor the vice president has any illusions.
One of the two Houses of Congress, the House of Representatives, has just passed into the hands of the conservatives, which makes a major law on abortion illusory, whether it is to protect it or undermine it.
The pressure from the religious right, on this subject which has divided America for decades, does not weaken.
Thousands of abortion opponents marched on Friday to call on parliamentarians for a national ban.
The president can only issue decrees of limited scope.
On Sunday, the White House, for example, promised to protect as much as possible access to pills that can terminate a pregnancy during the first weeks.