It’s a historical turnaround. The very conservative Supreme Court of the United States buried, Friday, June 24, a judgment which, for almost half a century, guaranteed the right of American women to have an abortion. This decision does not make pregnancy terminations illegal, but returns the United States to the situation in force before the emblematic “Roe v. Wade” judgment of 1973, when each state was free to authorize them or not. “The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each state from regulating or prohibiting abortion.specifies the Supreme Court, but makes “this power to the people and their elected representatives”.
The right to abortion is “thrown into the dustbin of history”greeted former Vice President Mike Pence, in office under the mandate of former US President Donald Trump. “He it is up to all who cherish the sanctity of life to decide that we will stand up for the unborn child.”she insists.
Now that Roe v. Wade has been consigned to the ash heap of history, a new arena in the cause of life has emerged and it is incumbent on all who cherish the sanctity of life to resolve that we will take the defense of the unborn…
—Mike Pence (@Mike_Pence) June 24, 2022
Conversely, the main family planning organization promises to continue to “to fight”. And former Democratic President Barack Obama accuses the Supreme Court of having “attacked the basic freedoms of millions of American women”.
Today, the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of previous, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues—attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans.
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 24, 2022
Given the fractures in the country, half of the States, especially in the South and the centre, which are more conservative and religious, could banish them in the more or less short term. Thus, even before this decision was rendered, the conservative States played vaguely around the terms “undue burden” to multiply the restrictions, forcing many clinics to go out of business. In West Virginia or Mississippi, there is only one center left performing pregnancy terminations, while California has more than 150.
More than 930,000 abortions were recorded in 2020 in the United States, according to the latest statistics from the Guttmacher Institute, which noted a recent rebound in abortions after thirty years of continuous decline. This figure corresponds to a rate of 14.4 abortions per 1,000 women of reproductive age. It is of the same order of magnitude as in the rest of the rich countries. Nearly 50% of women having recourse to pregnancy termination live below the poverty line and black and Hispanic women are overrepresented (29% and 25% respectively). Lhe decision of the Supreme Court will therefore penalize them more, underline the defenders of the right to abortion.