The battle for abortion is “not over”, assured Joe Biden on Sunday, 50 years to the day after a famous Supreme Court judgment which guaranteed access to abortion everywhere in the United States, but which was overthrown last June.
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“Today we should celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Roe v. Wade”, the case law which for decades guaranteed the right to abortion throughout the United States, said the Democratic president in a tweet.
“Instead, Republican “MAGA” officials (that is to say, acquired by former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” program, editor’s note) went to war against the right of women to take decisions about their health themselves,” denounced Joe Biden.
“I have always fought to protect women’s reproductive rights and I will always fight,” assured the president, who has only meager institutional resources on this subject.
Last June, the highest American court dynamited this case law, considering that the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy was not protected by the Constitution.
The Supreme Court, to which Donald Trump has given a very conservative composition, has thus allowed some twenty states governed by Republicans to ban or severely restrict access to abortion.
In his tweets on Sunday, Joe Biden insists that “women’s right to choose is not negotiable” and calls on Congress to pass a law that would use the terms of the “Roe v. Wade”, by imposing himself on the conservative states.
But the 80-year-old Democrat has no chance of being heard: one of the two Chambers of Congress, the House of Representatives, has just passed into the hands of the Conservatives.
The president has had to settle for issuing decrees with limited scope since June 2022.
On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris must also detail, in a speech marking the 50th anniversary of the “Roe v. Wade”, a new volley of regulatory measures.
The White House this time wants to protect access to mifepristone-based pills (or RU 486), which can terminate a pregnancy during the first weeks.
Abortion rights activists also announced rallies on Sunday in several cities across the United States to mark the anniversary.