Leaked abortion ruling sparks firestorm in US

US President Joe Biden urged voters on Tuesday to defend “fundamental” rights after a leaked Supreme Court draft ruling indicated the imminent end to nationwide legal abortion, long viewed as a basic freedom by tens of millions of Americans.

If the draft ruling is confirmed by the court, it would overturn the 1973 Roe vs Wade decision, which enshrined abortion rights across the country.

Instantly, abortion laws would be left up to individual state legislatures, with as many as half expected to enact bans or new restrictions.

For many women, the potential loss of abortion rights across swaths of the United States raises the prospect of being forced to travel hundreds of miles for the procedure or giving birth in traumatic circumstances.

Outside the Supreme Court building in the heart of Washington, more than a thousand protesters on both sides of the hotly-debated issue gathered on Tuesday.

“It’s an obscene invasion of women’s privacy and their abilities to decide what to do with their own bodies,” said 40-year-old political analyst Adriane Busby.

Republicans have pushed hard for years to overturn Roe, and it became only a matter of time after three conservative justices were appointed under former president Donald

Trump, shifting the Supreme Court’s political balance sharply to the right.

The leaked ruling’s publication on Monday by the US news site Politico thrust the intensely divisive issue to the centre of the November congressional midterms elections, potentially opening a path for beleaguered Democrats to stem expected losses.

Biden, whose Democrats have been forecast to lose their already narrow control of Congress, issued a rallying cry to the left, warning that restricting abortion rights will be only the beginning.

“I believe that a woman’s right to choose is fundamental ... and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned,” Biden said in a written statement.

In New York, a liberal bastion, thousands of protesters rallied outside a federal courthouse in Manhattan chanting “abortion is a human right, fight fight fight”.