Thousands of people demonstrated this Friday in Washington in an annual march antiabortionfifty years after the judgment of roe v. Wade. The atmosphere was more combative than festive, according to afp.
The march began in 1974 in defiance of the Roe v. Wade, adopted a year earlier by the Supreme Court and which guaranteed the right of women Americans to terminate the pregnancy.
“I grew up like a baby.”
Anti-abortion activists celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade during the annual March For Life in Washington DC
Original reporting by @CatOriel pic.twitter.com/6bpWmzPrzy
— Forbes (@Forbes) January 21, 2023
The case had been brought on behalf of Jane Roe, the legal pseudonym of Norma McCorvey, who was fighting then-Dallas prosecutor Henry Wade over a Texas state law that allowed abortions only to save the woman’s life.
At that time, 30 of the 50 states in the country had similar legislation.
McCorvey was a single mother pregnant for the third time, but was unable to have the desired abortion. Although she won the case, by the time the Supreme Court pronounced her sentence the baby, a girl, had already been born and had been given up for adoption.
On June 24, the Court, heavily remodeled by former Republican President Donald Trump, agreed with the anti-abortionists who since then usually demonstrate in January. His decision was to leave each state free to ban abortions in its territory.
Since then, 18 states, according to counts efehave prohibited abortion or have severely restricted it, and in 13 of them access to this service is practically impossible, although there are exceptions.
The 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade is symbolic for those who are for or against abortion.
Critics hail the June court ruling as a first step, and supporters see it as evidence that you can’t let your guard down.
The anti-abortion organization “March for Life” estimates that since that first ruling “some 62 million lives have been lost due to legal abortion,” and estimates that the number of voluntary terminations of pregnancy will drop from the current 900,000 per year, according to its data. , about 200,000 in this new stage «post Roe».
BREAKING: The Supreme Court just overturned Roe v. Wade, ending our constitutional right to abortion. We know you may be feeling a lot of things right now — hurt, anger, confusion. Whatever you feel is OK. We’re here with you—and we’ll never stop fighting for you.
—Planned Parenthood (@PPFA) June 24, 2022
When abortion was not legal in the United States, undergoing one carried great legal and health risks, Carrie Flaxman, senior director of law and public policy litigation at Planned Parenthood, the largest network of reproductive service clinics in the US, reminded the Spanish agency. .
“It subjected people to surveillance, investigation, arrest, prosecution and other types of criminal sanctions. This was destroying families, careers and lives. Roe decriminalized abortion by acknowledging that it is a right protected by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution,” Flaxman explains.
Right to abortion in the US: Roe v. Wade, a watershed torpedoed by the Supreme Court
Half a century later, the decision of the Supreme Court, with a conservative majority, annulled that advance.
Some women are forced to travel hundreds or thousands of miles outside their home state for medical care if they can afford it, she adds, and others miscarry outside the health system or are forced to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term.
With information from Efe, Afp and Forbes.
