Fifty years after Roe v. Wade,
the Supreme Court of the United States rules abortion out of constitutional rights
In a case between an abortion clinic and the State of Mississippi1, of which a recent law prohibits the carrying out of abortions after the fifteenth week of amenorrhea, and following the change in its composition during the presidency of Donald Trump, the Supreme Court of the United States has just overturned, on June 24, 2022, its jurisprudence half-Since the 1973 Roe v. Wade and 1992 Parenthood of Southeastern Pa v. Casey decisions, the voluntary termination of pregnancy has been recognized as a fundamental constitutional right throughout the Union. It considers that these decisions « […] must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including the one on which defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely – the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. » To justify this reversal of jurisprudence, it goes so far as to misrepresent the words of Abraham Lincoln, the father of the abolition of slavery in the Southern States, who said : « We all declare for Liberty ; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. » The right to abortion in a democratic country is indeed a freedom, a word that most judges of the Supreme Court of the United States have soiled. From now on, the right of American women to benefit from a voluntary abortion depends solely on the decision of the federal States and is no longer protected by the Union’s Constitution.
By the Dobbs decision of June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court of the United States not only betrayed the humanist ideal of Abraham Lincoln but violated the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) of the Constitution, under which « No State shall […] deprive any person of […] liberty […] without due process of law […] ». It has just trampled upon the freedom to use our body according to our conscience and will. On January 6, 2021, Donald Trump tried to have thousands of rioters invade the Capitol, where the people’s representatives sit. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court, colonized by Donald Trump’s allies, set back the fundamental rights of American citizens : in eight federal States (Missouri, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Kentucky, Alabama, Louisiana, Wisconsin), the overthrow of case law Roe and Casey immediately led to a ban on abortion; in seven others (Idaho, Mississipi, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Wyoming), it is certain that it will be prohibited by the end of the year; it is only guaranteed in nineteen federal States. In some respects, the most powerful country in the world has just joined the cohort of the thirty or so States that prohibit abortion or drastically limit access to it : Egypt, Senegal, Gabon, Madagascar, Mauritania, Suriname, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Ivory Coast, Libya, Uganda, South Sudan, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, Guatemala, Paraguay, Venezuela, Malta, Andorra, Vatican and Poland.
The Fédération nationale de la Libre Pensée condemns this reactionary decision and gives its full support to the American people. It assures all atheists, free thinkers and humanists in the United States of its readiness to contribute with them to the fight for the restoration of the right to abortion within the Union as a whole.
1 Dobbs, State Health Officer of the Mississipi Department of Health v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.