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At the end of June, the Supreme Court of USA will make a fundamental decision: to penalize the abortion. But it will not be necessary to wait until that date to find out that the historic ruling of 1973 – the well-known Roe vs. Wade– will be revoked. The leak to the press of the draft of a document written by the conservative magistrate Samuel Alito has triggered the alarm and has once again divided the country on an ultra-sensitive issue.
The president of the Supreme Courtalso a conservative John Roberts, confirmed the authenticity of the document, but has already said that he will initiate an investigation into how it came into the hands of the Politico portal, which was responsible for disseminating it on Monday night.
If the judgment is reversed Roe vs. Wadedoes not mean that abortion will become illegal throughout the country, but rather that each state will make the decision about its prohibition or the period of time that a woman has to interrupt her pregnancy.
“This is going to have tremendous socioeconomic repercussions”the political scientist María Puerta Riera, professor of Political Science at Valencia College in Orlando, tells El Comercio.
“It will affect, above all, the most vulnerable women, Latinas or Afro-Americans who will not have the means to travel to states that could allow abortion. It is going to harm the poorest, those with several children, a sector of the population for which there are no legal resources.”
Currently, the law states that for any reason, but now it could be reduced to 15 weeks or simply none.
If the Supreme Court makes its decision official in June, there are several states that are ready to impose their restrictions. According to the Guttmacher Institute, , including Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi and Texas. This despite the fact that various surveys indicate that 60% of Americans consider that abortion should remain legal in all or most cases.
LOOK: How would the US abortion landscape change if “Roe v. Wade” is repealed?
The destination of the rights obtained
The news has already provoked demonstrations in front of the Supreme Court building, whose approval continues to drop and last year reached 40%.
“Future protest actions are to be expected for at least the next two months before said opinion is officially published. Being a decision that affects federal laws, these marches will not be limited to Washington DC but will expand to other urban centers “tells El Comercio Ani De la Quintana, associate director of the global risk management consultancy, Control Risks.
“These marches and protests are likely to try to pressure the Biden administration to take steps to protect abortion rights, through actions such as codifying abortion rights into federal law. Meanwhile, anti-abortion activists will respond with counter-protests.”he adds.
For Soledad Vallejos, an Argentine journalist and writer who is an expert on abortion issues, changing what was achieved with Roe vs. Wade It will not only affect women, but the right to health and privacy.
“The American women’s movement was strong enough to achieve that ruling in the 1970s, and from then on it was taken for granted that nothing could put it at risk. But in the last 10 years we have seen a growth of conservative reaction at a global level, driven by an alliance of political sectors with deeply conservative and reactionary sectors of different churches. It seems to me that feminisms in general did not notice this in time, so it was taken for granted that certain guaranteed rights were not necessary to defend or ensure their continuity”, express to this newspaper.
LOOK: Joe Biden calls to defend the “fundamental” right to abortion at the polls in the US.
politics and religion
This almost certain decision of the Supreme Court could also drag other rulings that go against the conservatism of its judges, who are the majority, such as equal marriage.
“It could also go against contraceptive methods, because that is tied to the issue of abortion, and pro-life activists also want the right to contraception to be denied.”adds Puerta Riera.
“These conservative magistrates are not only conservative from a political point of view. There are some, like Amy Coney Barrett -who was proposed by Donald Trump in 2020- who are closely linked to the church. It will now become a philosophical-religious issue”, Explain.
Currently, , three of which were appointed by former President Trump.
“The appointments that Trump managed to achieve meant an imbalance in favor of the conservative sector, and it is not conservatism in a traditional liberal sense, but conservatism with a strong weight of evangelical churches. It is a type of justice that is far from thinking of what is confessional as something private”, Vallejos points out.
Likewise, Puerta Riera points out that the judges are not deciding because of what the majority of Americans think, but because of that small ultra-conservative base that has promoted them as magistrates.
“This base has control over the Supreme Court and also the state legislatures, which are very important. The root of democracy in the United States is in local and state governments, it is not just Congress in Washington, ”she details.
And in this aspect comes a fundamental question: because in November will be the mid-term legislative elections, which could determine that the Republicans regain control of Congress.
For Puerta Riera, however, it could generate the opposite effect and mobilize Democratic and independent voters who did not intend to participate in the elections:
“This is going to cause a change in the electoral dynamics that we were seeing until yesterday, because many young people were thinking of not voting. In legislative elections there is usually not much participation. But before this leak, there was a certainty that the Democrats were going to lose both chambers, or at least the House of Representatives, but now there is a new game. This decision will have consequences in these elections.”
Source: Elcomercio
