For the first time since the end of the right to abortion in the United States, a supreme court of an American state guaranteed it Thursday, January 5 for its inhabitants, in the name of the local constitution, inflicting a setback of size to opponents of abortion.
mo12345lemonde with AFP
The highest jurisdiction of South Carolina invalidated a law prohibiting an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy on Thursday. “We judge that the right to respect for privacy registered in our Constitution covers the decisions of women to abort,” she justified.
It is with similar reasoning that the Supreme Court of the United States had sanctuarized, in 1973 in its ROE v judgment. Wade, the right of the Americans to abort. But last June, in a historical flip-flop, she estimated that this decision was wrong and made freedom to each State to legislate as it pleases.
a fractured country
Since then, the country has been fractured between states that have decreed prohibitions, mainly located in the south and the center, and those having strengthened access to pregnancy interruptions on their soil, rather on the coasts.
And this landscape is very moving, each measure being the subject of cascade appeal before the local courts.
Since June, restrictive measures have been blocked urgently in several states pending substantive decisions. The Supreme Court of South Carolina is the first to make a final stop.
“Monumental victory”
“It is a monumental victory for the protection of legal abortions in the south,” reacted the Planned Parenthood organization, which manages many clinics practicing abortion.
This opens up new prospects for women in the region deprived of access to abortion, especially in the states of Alabama or Tennessee.
It is not necessarily the end of the war. In its decision, the Supreme South Carolina Court considers that the right to respect for privacy can be “limited” provided that this is done in a “reasonable”.
This declaration could allow local legislators to introduce new restrictions.