Divided US to face ‘some nightmares’
Police fired tear gas on abortion rights protesters at Arizona’s Capitol building in Phoenix as campaigners fanned out across the US on a second day of demonstrations against the Supreme Court’s ruling and state after conservative state moved swiftly to ban the procedure.
Politicians were forced to huddle in a basement as thousands of protesters had gathered earlier on the Capitol grounds in Phoenix, divided into groups both supporting and condemning the US Supreme Court’s decision overturning the 50-year-old Roe v. Wade ruling giving women the right to have an abortion.
SWAT team members
fired tear gas from the second floor of the old Capitol building to disperse protesters when they started banging on glass doors.
Authorities said there were no injuries nor arrests.
The deeply polarised country is now grappling with a new level of division: between states that will now, or soon, deny the right to abortion, enshrined since 1973, and those that still allow it.
A few thousand people thronged the streets on Saturday outside the fenced-off Supreme Court in Washington, in hot summer weather, carrying signs that read “War on women, who’s next?” and “No uterus, No opinion.” “What happened yesterday is inde
scribable and disgusting,” said student Mia Stagner, 19. Being forced to be a mother is not something any woman should have to do.”
Carolyn Keller, 57, said she was enraged by the ruling, warning: “They came after women. They will come after the LGBT community and contraception.”
But counter-protesters like Savannah Craven stood firm.
“It’s not a personal choice to have an abortion, it involves two people and unfortunately that choice ends in the ending of someone’s life,” she said.
Demonstrations also took place in Los Angeles and at smaller rallies around the country.
Women in states that restrict abortion or outlaw it altogether will either have to continue with their pregnancy, undergo a clandestine abortion, obtain abortion pills, or travel to another state where it remains legal.
“We are going to see some nightmare scenarios, sadly,” Joe Biden’s spokeswoman Karine Jean Pierre said on Air Force One, as the president headed to Europe for G7 and NATO summits.
At least eight right-leaning states imposed immediate bans on abortion – with a similar number to follow suit in coming weeks – after the Supreme Court ruling, which drew criticism from some of America’s closest allies.
Fuelling the mobilisation, many now fear the Supreme Court, with a clear conservative majority made possible by Donald Trump, might next set its sights on rights like same-sex marriage and contraception.
Mr Biden – who has likewise voiced concerns the court might not stop at abortion – spoke out again on Saturday against the “shocking decision”. “I know how painful and devastating the decision is for so many Americans,” said the president, who has urged Congress to restore abortion protections as federal law, and vowed the issue would be on the ballot in November’s midterm elections.