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Mississippi Law | The right to abortion under debate at the Supreme Court

(Washington) The future of abortion rights in the United States is played out Wednesday before a Supreme Court profoundly overhauled by Donald Trump, which could use the review of a Mississippi law to go back almost 50 years .






Charlotte PLANTIVE
France Media Agency

The nine wise men, including six conservatives, are looking from 10 a.m. on a law adopted in 2018 by this southern state, which prohibits abortions after fifteen weeks of pregnancy. She is expected to make her decision next spring.

Reflecting the enormous stakes of the file, demonstrators flocked in the early morning by the hundreds in front of the temple of American law, where they formed two rival groups in an electric atmosphere.

Behind signs “To abort is to kill” or “God hates hands that shed innocent blood”, opponents of pregnancy terminations had high hopes of obtaining, after 50 years of struggle, an end to the judgment. “Roe v. Wade ”.

In this landmark 1973 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution guarantees the right of women to have an abortion and that states cannot deprive them of it. She then specified that it was valid as long as the fetus is not “viable”, that is to say around 22 to 24 weeks of pregnancy.

Mississippi’s law, while measured, violates this legal framework and had logically been blocked by federal courts before it came into effect. The leaders of this rural and religious state then turned to the Supreme Court.

When it accepted their appeal, when there was no obligation to do so, the Court explained that it was ready to question the limit of “viability”. But Mississippi is now asking him to go further and simply cancel his 1973 shutdown.

“We are aware of the impact of our request,” State Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in an editorial to the Washington Post. “But 49 years ago, the Court favored political intuition over sound legal reasoning to reach a constitutionally unfounded conclusion and it is time to correct that error. ”

“Oubliettes”

Support from all levels of the Republican Party, along with the Catholic Church and numerous anti-abortion groups, some of which spent millions of dollars on advertising campaigns ahead of the hearing.

All these actors believe that their hour has come after half a century of judicial and political struggle.

“We are about to enter a new era, where the Supreme Court will return the Roe v. Wade in the dungeons of history, which he should never have left, ”said former vice-president Mike Pence, a Christian ultraconservative, on the eve of the hearing.

Opponents of abortion are galvanized by the arrival on the Supreme Court of three judges appointed by former President Donald Trump, who have strengthened his conservative majority.

Their influence has already been felt on 1is September, when the temple of law refused, for procedural reasons, to block the entry into force of a law in Texas which prohibits abortion as early as six weeks of pregnancy.

He has since reopened the case and expressed his skepticism about the architecture of the text, but his final decision is long overdue and many Texans remain forced to leave their state to have an abortion.

36 millions

On the other hand, defenders of the right of women to have abortions are closing ranks.

Medical, feminist and civil rights associations have written to the Court asking it to invalidate the Mississippi law, as have hundreds of elected Democrats or 500 high-level athletes, including soccer player Megan Rapinoe.

All ensure that altering, if only a little, the current case law will bring down the whole edifice.

If the viability criterion is abandoned, “States will be able to prohibit abortions at any stage of pregnancy”, notes Julie Rikelman, who will plead before the nine wise men on behalf of the only clinic practicing abortions. in Mississippi.

According to the powerful family planning organization Planned Parenthood, 28 states are likely to do so, and 36 million women of childbearing age are denied access to terminations of pregnancy.

Even without saying it, validating Mississippi’s law “would be like overturning Roe,” says Julie Rikelman.

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