USA abortion. The American Supreme Court plans to reconsider the right to abortion guaranteed since 1973. The final decision of the judges is expected at the beginning of the summer but if the project is validated each State will be free to ban abortion.
Crowds of demonstrators follow one another in front of the American Supreme Court, all protesting against the project of the conservative judges to reconsider the right to abortion. According to Politico who was able to access a draft decision dated February 2022, Judge Samuel Alito intends to leave each federated state the possibility of prohibiting or authorizing access to abortion. The magistrate attacks the judgment Roe c. Wade of 1973 which has guaranteed the right to abortion for more than half a century in the United States. “We feel that Roe and Casey should be cancelled. […] It’s time to uphold the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected officials,” the document reads. The conservative justice appointed to the Supreme Court in 2006 by George W. Bush argues that the right to abortion “is not deeply rooted in the history and traditions of the nation” and “is not protected by any provision of the Constitution”. Such declarations open the way to a questioning of the jurisprudence especially since according to a source of Politico, of the nine associate justices of the Supreme Court, four, all conservatives, sided with Samuel Alito’s decision. The three liberal justices are working to oppose the plan and the position of the President of the Court, John Robert is still unknown.
The vote of the project would allow each of the 50 American states to decide by the votes of the local elected officials to prohibit or to authorize the citizens the recourse to the IVG. At least half of the states, particularly in the still very conservative South and Midwest regions, would jump at the chance to ban abortion from their territory.
Access to abortion in danger
Judge Alito’s draft decision consulted by Politico is an “authentic” document but is not the “final” version of what could become an upcoming court decision, the Supreme Court said in a May 3 statement. The 98-page draft available to the media is dated February and can be modified until June 30, the American site also recalls that “drafts are often amended in consultation with other magistrates” and especially since “the judges sometimes modify their votes”. The “cancellation” of the right to abortion, for the time being protected by the 14th amendment of the American Constitution, is therefore still only a hypothesis even if with a majority of conservative judges in the Supreme Court the chances for that the decision is validated are considerable.
The President of the Court, John Roberts “does not seem opposed to an overthrow of Roe, if it comes in stages, so as not to rush public opinion” analyzed the American historian Mary Ziegler on France info in February. The idea of leaving States responsible for setting limits on abortion is therefore a likely scenario. As for the other judges, most showed themselves ready to overturn Roe v. Wade of 1973 during the examination of the text in December 2021. The historian recalls that the decisions of the Court are often difficult to anticipate, that concerning the future of the right to abortion is expected for the beginning of the summer .
The right to abortion, a constitutional right?
Although still frowned upon and decried in the most conservative states of the United States, access to abortion is a right considered guaranteed to all by the Constitution since a 1973 judgment. At the time it was the High Court decision Roe v. Wade which makes it possible to recognize the right to abortion, the Supreme Court had then ruled 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”.
The Supreme Court at the same time set limits to the constitutional right to abortion, in particular “the protection of health, medical criteria and prenatal life”. Roe v. Wade went along with 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. At the federal level, the states remain free to limit the right to abortion as in Mississippi where a law prohibits abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a text which judges seized on at the start of 2022.