‘We’re on the offensive’: Several major US progressive organizations called on Friday to continue the fight for the right to abortion, which the Supreme Court overturned last week, through the nation’s ballot boxes and courts.
• Read also: Abortion access: Quebec still needs improvement, says one organization
• Read also: Here are the judges at the heart of the latest controversial decisions
According to their calculations, abortion has already become “inaccessible or nearly inaccessible” in dozens of US states since the Supreme Court ruling last Friday.
“Pregnant women in states where abortion has been banned are waking up not knowing what to do,” said Alexis McGill Johnson, president of America’s leading Planned Parenthood organization, Planned Parenthood, Planned Parenthood.
But the legal counterattack was swift, with lawsuits filed in state courts. “We don’t just defend ourselves, we attack,” asserted Anthony Romero, director of the powerful ACLU.
Legal proceedings to challenge this ban and defend the right to abortion are underway in at least 11 US states, from Oklahoma to West Virginia, through Utah, Kentucky and Idaho.
In Louisiana, the clinic and medical students, for example, have attacked the three laws banning abortion, arguing that they are too “vague” because they do not clearly specify the exceptions or penalties associated with them.
On Monday, a judge suspended those laws until the July 8 hearing.
“We expect to see more complaints soon,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights.
These gangs should delay the deadline, but according to the Guttmacher Institute, half of the states, especially in the conservative and religious center-central South, should ban abortions on their territory for nearly the long term.
These groups also called for mobilization for the midterm elections in November, where Americans will determine the composition of Congress and decide a series of local polls, sometimes crucial to the future of abortion right.
US President Joe Biden once again denounced Friday’s “terrible and extreme” Supreme Court ruling, which he said would “turn life upside down.” The Democratic leader urged Americans to go to the polls in November to bolster his majority in the Senate, to try to pass a federal law protecting the right to abortion.