A battle of historic proportions seems to be looming in the United States after last Friday the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, issued a ruling that revokes the protection of the right to abortionwhich until now had been protected by two of its previous sentences, considering that the Constitution does not guarantee it.
(Also read: Why did the US go back 50 years after ruling on abortion?)
Being the first time that the highest judicial instance pronounces itself to repress a right, the decision regarding the case “Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization” on a Mississippi law that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks in that state, where only there is still a clinic that offers this service, it was supported by six of the nine judges of the Court and unleashed a true earthquake, not only because of what is at stake after the decision (nine states have already declared abortion illegal), but also because of the possible setbacks in civil rights to which the Court inherited from former President Donald Trump seems to be turning.
To the repeal of the constitutional right to abortion, which returns to the states the power to legislate on the issue erasing half a century of the precedent set by the Roe v. Wade ruling, which in 1973 gave federal status to the freedom of women to terminate pregnancythe ratification made on Thursday by the Supreme Court on the right of citizens to carry firearms in public is added.
The ruling struck down a New York law that required a person to show they had legitimate self-defense needs to receive a gun permit. and will prevent states from restricting the right to arm.
And that seems to be just the tip of the iceberg, since the sentences opened speculation about other social conquests, such as gay marriage, revived by the line of argument of one of the most conservative judges.
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“In future privacy filings,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a personal brief accompanying the abortion decision, “we should review all the case law.”
Thomas, citing three rulings that declare unconstitutional the laws that sanction sexual relations between people of the same sex, stated that since they are based on the same precept of the Constitution as the one that protected the right to voluntarily interrupt pregnancy, the Court has ” the duty to correct the error'” they established.
For now, it is only the opinion of one of the nine judges that make up the temple of American law, but the profound remodeling of the Supreme Court under the presidency of Donald Trump, who appointed three new judges giving a clear majority to conservatives, It makes democrats, lawyers and associations that defend rights fear that several achievements, including access to contraceptive methods and even those that obey the protection of the environment, will end up on the bench.
“Once Roe v. Wade is eliminated, the agenda is ready to restrict access to contraceptives, to eliminate equal marriage and the recognition of rights to same-sex couples. In addition to restricting those rights, it is likely that they also want to go for other things, such as restricting academic freedom and expression so that one cannot speak of a critical theory of race or gender theory, ” sociologist Montserrat explains to EL TIEMPO. Sagot, known for her work on violence against women and girls.
Sagot even goes further, and warns that at this time “the Supreme Court is also hearing a case on climate change that will probably end up restricting the powers of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the emission of gases that cause the greenhouse effect.”
Trump’s footprint
President Trump left a deep mark on the federal courts, so deep that it went beyond his four years in the White House.
As a candidate, Trump used a promise to appoint conservative judges to drum up support from skeptical Republicans.
Then, as president, he leaned on conservative legal organizations and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to ruthlessly fill nearly every vacancy on the federal bench — more than 230 judges on federal benches, added to three new members of the Supreme Court—without being dissuaded by Democrats.
For this reason, the three members of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court, Judges Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, have already questioned whether there are guarantees for other constitutional rights. “No one should be sure that this (conservative Supreme Court) majority is done with its work,” wrote the three liberals who make up the minority after the abortion ruling.
Michael Shifter, an adjunct professor at Georgetown, told this newspaper that “unfortunately” the Supreme Court “reflects and is part of the political polarization in the country”.
“Specifically, it is part of the culture war that has gained a lot of strength in recent years in the United States. The Republican Party has been developing this political approach for years and with the latest decision on abortion it is bearing very significant fruit. It is notable that the decision represents the point of view of a minority, but the strategy of accumulating political power regardless of public opinion has been successful. It is very difficult to know for sure how far this trend may go, but it clearly does not reflect the attitudes of the vast majority of Americans.”
It is notable that the decision represents the point of view of a minority, but the strategy of accumulating political power regardless of public opinion has been successful.
Along the same lines, Santiago Cantón, director of the Rule of Law Program at the Inter-American Dialogue, assured that “the vast majority of the country, more than 70 percent, agrees with maintaining the precedent of Roe vs. wade”.
And it is that these decisions have been supported for decades even by those who worked to achieve the repeal of the precedent, as well as by the majority of Americans (even in majority Republican states), as polls have shown year after year.
Something similar occurs with the perception of gun control.
According to a recent Morning Consult/Politico poll, which asked voters whether they support or oppose stricter gun control laws in the United States, nearly two in three Americans favored such controls. 65 percent of voters favor stronger gun control laws. In fact, the proportion of Republicans in favor of stricter gun laws increased from 37 to 44 percent.
Just yesterday, the president Biden signed the law aimed at establishing the regulation of firearms, the most important in this matter in almost 30 yearsbut which remains far below the aspirations of his administration.
Still, for Tarah Demant, interim national director of programs, advocacy and government affairs at Amnesty International USA, the chances that Congress would have to be able to stop the Court are slim, given that even if the Democrats maintain control of the House and the Senate, will not be able to annul this judicial ruling.
In fact, Democrats have already failed to get Congress to pass legislation to grant a federal right to abortion, which would have prevented individual states from banning the procedure.
“The core problem is that, after the Court’s decision on abortion, everything depends entirely on what state a person lives in. For this reason, the fight will be concentrated at the state level where dozens of legal battles are already arising to defend rights,” says Demant.
Democratic Chance
The Court’s decision could not be more timely, since Americans will vote in November for their representatives in Congress. When everything seemed to give the Republican party, still dominated by Trump, the advantage to take control of the House of Representatives and even the Senate, the Democrats hope that the issue of abortion and gun control will drive a good part of the electoral vote for they.
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“Probably, this decision, to which is added the one that abolishes the carrying of weapons in New York, will give a necessary boost to the Democrats who see the November election as very complicated. The strong pendulum movement to the right can have a strong impact on the elections in favor of the Democrats, although it is still difficult for them to win”, Canton clarifies.
Especially since there are plenty of Republicans who would like to legislate a federal abortion ban that would ban abortion in every state and is already looming as the next battle if Republicans take control of Congress after the next election.
With polarization at its most extreme, it seems that the decisions of the Court ended up exposing the enormous challenge that democracy faces in the United States. As Macarena Saez, director of Women’s Rights at Human Rights Watch, mentions, “ The abortion decision does not only impact women, it impacts democracy and how the judiciary seems to decide that instead of expanding rights, it wants to restrict it”.
STEPHANY ECHAVARRIA
International Editor
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