USA abortion. The right to abortion in the United States, endangered by a Supreme Court decision during the summer, is at the heart of the 2022 midterms campaign. Will it be a decisive issue in the ballot? Explanations.
It was a decision taken in the summer that shook up the midterms 2022 election campaign in the United States: the reversal by the Supreme Court, formed by a majority of Republican judges, of the constitutional right to the voluntary interruption of large ( IVG), June 24. Since that date, more than 25 states, including the most conservative, have made abortion illegal or considerably restricted the use of abortion. Revolted, the Democratic camp made the defense of the right to abortion its battle horse at the launch of the campaign for the mid-term elections, organized on Tuesday, November 8. The strategy has paid off since many Democratic candidates have stepped up to the plate and voters have long demonstrated in the streets to demand the right of women to have abortions. So much so that the legal decision to attack the judgment of 1973 Roe c. Wade long desired by Republicans was almost missed. The latter, for some, tried the card of flexibility advocating not the prohibition but the restriction of the right to abortion to a certain number of weeks during pregnancy, in vain.
Joe Biden, who promised that one of his first decisions would be to enshrine the right to abortion in the Constitution in the event of a majority at the end of the midterms, hopes to remobilize his electorate and the vote of the female sex. A fringe that could be decisive in a context where obtaining the majority of seats in the Senate could be played with only a few votes. But if at the start of the campaign, abortion in the United States was one of the main issues in the election, in recent weeks, economic concerns have taken over the minds of Americans. Still, in five states, the midterm vote will also be an opportunity for voters to respond to referendums on the right to abortion.
Referenda on abortion in the United States during the midterms?
Tuesday, November 8, in addition to voting in the midterm elections to renew the composition of the House of Representatives and one-third of the seats in the Senate, in five states, the question of the right to abortion will also be posed to voters. However, the referendums will not be exactly the same in these five territories. Since the reversal of the right to abortion in the United States, each federal state is free to set its own laws in this area, so the question will differ:
- In California and in the Vermonttwo democratic states, as well as in the Michigan which can swing in favor of the Republican camp, voters will be able to say whether they are for or against the right to abortion.
- In the Kentuckywhere Republicans still win and abortion is already illegal, voters will vote for or against an amendment to the state constitution to declare that “nothing in the state constitution creates a right to ‘abortion”.
- In the Montanaalso predominantly Republican but where abortion is protected by judges and elected officials, voters will have to vote on the criminalization of the use of abortion by a 20-year prison sentence and a fine of 50,000 dollars.
What is the weight of the right to abortion in the midterms ballot?
Since this summer and the very controversial decision of the Supreme Court, the right to abortion has been the fight of a large part of the American population and the question has been at the heart of the midterms campaign. But as the vote nears, voters are prioritizing other concerns, particularly the high inflation gripping the country. According to a survey of Pewresearch published in mid-October, 79% of voters say that economic issues and policies will be decisive in their vote. The right to abortion is also a subject that speaks more to Democratic voters – who place health issues including the right to abortion their second priority (68%) according to the same opinion poll – than to Republicans, which won their case with the reversal of Roe c. Wade. and of which only 36% consider the subject “very important” according to CBS News.
In which states is abortion illegal?
Of the 50 states that include the United States, a large half took advantage of the decision taken by the Supreme Court on June 24, 2022 to weaken the right to abortion or even sometimes ban it. Depending on the state, federal law varies and political and legal institutions are able to contravene the ban, this is particularly the case in territories where elected officials and Democratic judges block the restriction of abortion. On the other hand, where the Republicans are in the majority, the right to abortion is only a memory or restricted to very strict conditions, conversely this right has been reinforced in several democratic states. The question of the right to abortion has not yet been decided in other territories such as in Pennsylvania where abortion is not protected and where the governor opposed the ban but is not sure to stand up to an Assembly with a Republican majority.
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The right to abortion, a constitutional right in the United States?
On June 24, 2022, the US Supreme Court reversed the 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, which was worth case law on the question of the use and the right to abortion in many American states. Before this legal decision, this right had been considered guaranteed to all by the Constitution for more than half a century. In the High Court decision Roe v. Wade it had been held that “the right to respect for private life, present in the 14th amendment of the Constitution […] is broad enough to apply to a woman’s decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.” Despite the case law, the Conservative Territories has long opposed the law.
E, 1973, the Supreme Court had, however, set limits to the constitutional right to abortion, in particular “the protection of health, medical criteria and prenatal life”. Roe v. Wade was accompanied by the decision Doe v. Bolton which allows States to restrict access to abortion when pregnancy is at an advanced stage. “The abortion is authorized up to the threshold of viability, that is to say the stage from which a fetus can survive outside the uterus. Abortion is therefore legal until approximately 24 weeks of pregnancy. , on the whole of the American territory”, specified the historian Mary Ziegler to France info, May 3, 2022. At the federal level, the States remain free to limit the right to abortion.