States to fight draft abortion law
US PRESIDENT Joe Biden has urged voters 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 v 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 swathes of the US raises the prospect of being forced to travel hundreds of kilometres 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 have gathered. “It’s an obscene invasion of women’s privacy and their abilities to decide what to do with their own bodies,” said Adriane Busby, a 40-year-old political analyst. “I didn’t think that we would have to be here in 2022, debating, protesting this. It’s a regression.”
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 late on Monday by the US news site Politico thrust the intensely divisive issue to the centre of the November congressional mid-term 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. “It will fall on voters to elect” officials who back abortion rights, he said, vowing to work to pass legislation in Congress that codifies Roe v Wade – a goal impossible to achieve unless far more Democrats win seats.
Biden went further, calling the draft ruling “radical” and warning of a “fundamental shift in American jurisprudence” that could put into question the future of gay marriage and “how you raise your child”.
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.” “You cannot prevent women from taking their own reproductive choices… That’s a fantasy,” said Kaytlin Bailey, 35.
The leak of the draft ruling was unprecedented, knocking another hole in the once hallowed reputation of the top court as the one apolitical branch in the US government.
Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed that the document released by Politico was authentic, although he cautioned that this did not necessarily represent the court’s final decision. Roberts ordered a probe into the leak.
Crowds of protesters from both camps at the Supreme Court building expressed their views, with anti-abortion rights activists chanting “abortion is violence. Abortion is oppression” as well as “Hey Hey Ho Ho Roe v Wade is going to go!”
But by yesterday evening, it was mostly pro-abortion rights activists present. “People with less economic means will be the most impacted by this decision,” said Michaela Palmer, 29. “People who are privileged will find others means to have an abortion, they will travel to other states.”
In Roe v Wade, the court ruled that access to abortion is a constitutional right. In a subsequent 1992 ruling, in Planned Parenthood v Casey, the court guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion until the foetus is viable outside the womb, which is typically around 22 to 24 weeks of gestation.
Most developed countries allow abortions on request up to a gestational limit, most often 12 weeks.
Roe v Wade makes the US one of a handful of nations to allow the procedure without restriction beyond 20 weeks of pregnancy, although many others allow it past that point for specific reasons. The court had been expected to decide this June on challenges to Roe v Wade.
The Republican National Committee said it was time for abortion decisions to revert to state governments.
The governor of Oklahoma marked the day by signing a highly restrictive law banning abortions after approximately six weeks of pregnancy – with no exceptions for cases of rape or incest – matching a Texas law enacted last year.
The laws are being challenged in court. The draft Supreme Court opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito and, according to Politico, has been circulating since February inside the court, now dominated 6-3 by conservatives. It calls the Roe v Wade decision “egregiously wrong from the start”.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito writes in the document. “It is time to heed the constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
The Guttmacher Institute, which backs abortion rights, has said 26 states are “certain or likely” to ban abortion if Roe v Wade is overturned.
Meanwhile, California is leading the charge against the Supreme Court. “I will be introducing a constitutional amendment that will make it crystal clear that reproductive rights in California including and specifically abortion are protected,” said the California senate’s acting president Toni Atkins.
Democratic governors of California, New Mexico and Michigan swiftly announced plans to enshrine abortion rights into law even if the court overturns Roe. “We have a Supreme Court that does not value the rights of women, and a political minority that will stop at nothing to take those rights away,” California governor Gavin Newsom said. “We have to fight like hell.”
Abortion providers said they were already working on providing services to women travelling from other states. Planned Parenthood operates about half of the 165 abortion clinics in California. The organisation has said it is treating about 80 patients from other states every month since Texas adopted a law allowing civil action against abortion providers.