Activists Join Pro-Life March as Supreme Court Decides Future of U.S. Abortion

Thousands of protesters held this Friday (21) in the American capital, Washington, the 49th edition of the March for Life, an event against abortion that is always held close to the anniversary of the decision Roe v. Wade when the Supreme Court authorized abortion in the United States under certain conditions on January 22, 1973.

Organizers did not release an estimate of how many people took part in the march, but in the protocol for asking permission for the event, they had estimated the presence of at least 50,000 protesters.

This year, activists expressed hope that the 2022 march will be their last, as the US Supreme Court began a judgment in December that could change the country’s abortion jurisprudence. Last month, oral arguments were heard in Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization, the result of which should be known this year.

In this process, the court can change or overturn the decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (this one from 1992), when the Supreme Court ruled that US states cannot prohibit abortion before so-called viability – the minimum period of gestation for a fetus to survive outside the uterus, now estimated at about 24 weeks.

Discussion of the case began when the Women’s Health Organization filed a lawsuit in lower federal court to challenge a law passed in Mississippi in 2018 that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, except in life-saving and health-preserving situations. mother’s physical condition or serious fetal abnormality.

In response, the state of Mississippi appealed to the Supreme Court in the second half of 2020, asking judges to rule on whether all bans on pre-viability abortions in the country are unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court now has a Conservative majority of six out of nine justices, giving protesters in Washington on Friday the prospect that case law will be reversed.

Convictions of Gazeta do Povo: defense of life from conception

“My hopes were dashed many times, but I never felt [tão otimista] like that,” Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, told the Associated Press.

Melanie Frei, 66, a 66-year-old protester who came from Wisconsin to join the march, told the Washington Post that “one day there will be [museu] Smithsonian an exposition of the pro-life movement to end abortion”. “We ended slavery, we ended segregation [racial] and now we are going to end abortion,” he added.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told the Post that the overthrow of Roe v. Wade “will only be the beginning.” “This is what we are preparing for with this ‘army’, for this fight that will be fought state by state”, he pointed out.

Last year, the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion, reported that the overthrow of Roe v. Wade would have 26 US states restrict or attempt to restrict abortion immediately.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki reiterated at her daily press conference the Joe Biden administration’s support for abortion. The Democratic administration last year filed a lawsuit against Texas’ so-called heartbeat law, which prohibits abortion from being performed in the state from the time the fetus’s heartbeat can be detected (usually around the sixth week). period) and provides that any citizen can file a civil action against people who “help or induce” the termination of pregnancy after that period.

This week, the Supreme Court once again denied that Texan law was suspended until a court ruling on the matter.

“Reproductive health care has been under extreme and relentless attack ever since (1973), especially in recent months,” Psaki said Friday. “We are deeply committed to ensuring that everyone has access to healthcare and we will defend it with every tool we have. This includes continuing to work with Congress to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act and codify this fundamental right into law.”