The debates around a Mississippi law prohibiting the act beyond fifteen weeks of pregnancy seem to draw an unfavorable orientation to the rights of women.
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The Supreme Court of the United States had an appointment with history, Wednesday, December 1st. By examining a law of Mississippi prohibiting abortion beyond fifteen weeks, its nine judges have also balancing, in hollow, one of its most emblematic texts of the post-war, dating from 1973: the ROE decision against Wade, who had established a constitutional right of women to dispose of their body and to abort.
today dominated by the Conservatives (six judges against three), the Court seemed to focus, in its deliberations, in favor of a revision of this right.
A complete abandonment would be dramatic, consider women’s rights defenders. According to them, such a decision – not expected before months – highlight the unprecedented politicization of the highest judicial institution of the country. Will this institution survive the stench that would create in public perception the idea that the constitution and its reading are only political acts? Warned the liberal judge Sonia Sotomayor. If people believe that everything is political, How are we going to survive? Will this court survive? “
In 1973, the Supreme Court had made abortion a constitutional right, in the name of the right to privacy. ROE against Wade believed that states could only decide on such a prohibition before the fetus is viable. Today, in medical terms, it means that abortion is allowed up to about twenty-third week of pregnancy. ROE against Wade was consolidated in 1992, during a new decision, family planning against CASEY. It considered that the laws penalizing or limiting abortion should not create or entail for the pregnant woman an “excessive load” (undue burden).
Trojan
The law of Mississippi, adopted in 2018 by a republican majority in the local assembly, has never been applied, because of the remedies. It provides for a prohibition of abortion beyond fifteen weeks, except medical emergencies. According to official data, more than 93% of abortions in this state were performed in 2018 before fourteen weeks of pregnancy, but cases beyond this period are often the most dramatic, in social and medical terms.
The designers of this legislation are not focused on this period. They are considering the text as a kind of Trojan, potentially able to put down ROE against Wade, taking advantage of the new conservative majority in the Supreme Court, consolidated under Donald Trump. If this was the case, considers the Guttmacher Institute, reference on this subject, twenty-one, could immediately implement a complete prohibition of the procedure, or radical restrictions. Among these, nine still have legislation prior to 1973, then frozen, while twelve others have adopted automatically suspended texts in recent years.
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