What consequences would the repeal of abortion in the United States have for the world?

The result of a global mobilization of feminist groups in the 1960s, the “Roe v. Wade” ruling forced all USA to legalize abortion. Its possible repeal would be a “symbol” that would “reinforce anti-abortion movements” in the world, warn several researchers.

LOOK: The right to abortion in the United States is in suspense and shows how conservatism continues to win battles

On January 22, 1973, the Supreme Court of USA decided in its landmark Roe v. Wade ruling that the constitutionally guaranteed right to respect for private life applied to abortion. The voluntary termination of pregnancy was legalized in all states of the country.

But a draft Supreme Court ruling, revealed last week by the Politico information website, finds that there is nothing in the Constitution that protects the right to abortion.

“To see a country as predominant as USA Going back on this right would have a strong symbolic weight, it would give an important dynamic to anti-abortion movements throughout the world. The speech will be: if the United States no longer supports this right, why do we support it?” Andréanne Bissonnette, a researcher at the University of Québec in Montreal, tells AFP.

The right to abortion has recently expanded in countries with significant influence from the Catholic Church: Ireland in 2018, Argentina in 2020, Mexico in 2021 and Colombia this year.

If attitudes toward abortion change at the federal level in USAthis “could give legitimacy to anti-abortion movements and their claims in certain countries,” reiterates Véronique Pronovost, who is doing her doctorate at the University of Québec in Montreal.

“Bills that propose to ‘frame’ the abortion law by adding limitations to access to services (parental obligation for minors, prohibition of terminating pregnancy in the third trimester…) could now be considered acceptable, even advisable,” he warns AFP.

– “Already complicated” –

“The greatest risk is that the ‘pro-choice’ position (free and free access to abortion) will be marginalized and that from now on it will be considered ‘extremist’, just like the pure and simple prohibition of the right to abortion”, insists the sociologist .

The historian Bibia Pavard, from the French university Panthéon-Assas, recalls that “many American states already prevent the benefit of a total right to abortion: Texas prohibits abortions when the heart of the fetus can already be heard, that is to say at six weeks, while that in other parts is authorized while the fetus is not viable outside the uterus, that is to say 24 weeks”.

“Other states ask women to look at an ultrasound to see the fetus, they apply processes that make access to the IVE (Voluntary Interruption of Pregnancy) very complex,” he says. “It’s already complicated in several states.”

The “pro-life” movement, influential in USA since the “Roe v. Wade” ruling, it has been a “model” for anti-abortion mobilization around the world, according to Bibia Pavard. As was the case for the “pro-choice” mobilizations in the 1960s, there is “an intense circulation of arguments, of people,” according to the historian.

According to her, in France, for example, the anti-abortion movements are renewing themselves, thanks to a new generation that has transformed the ways of communicating, using social networks above all. For these groups it would be “a symbol of success, since it would show that it is possible to undo a law that seemed guaranteed.”

Source: Elcomercio

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