The emotion is great, the manner strange, the consequences potentially serious. Shortly before midnight, Wednesday 1er September, the Supreme Court of the United States made a resounding decision, in an atmosphere of confrontation between its members.
By a narrow majority (5-4), the judges decided not to suspend a text that was however highly contested, almost completely infringing the right to abortion in the State of Texas. An astonishing decision, since the appeal procedures were not exhausted on the spot.
Texas law, signed in May by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and effective Wednesday, prohibits abortion as long as the heartbeat can be registered in the embryo, lowering the maximum term to six weeks. . According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 85% to 90% of cases concern a pregnancy that has reached beyond this period. There are no exceptions for incest or rape. Attempts at similar legislation elsewhere in the country had been contested and systematically rejected, because the Supreme Court guaranteed the right to abort as long as the fetus was not viable, i.e. around 22 weeks of pregnancy.
The novelty in the approach of the Texan conservatives resides in the form adopted to apply the law: a subcontracting to the citizens, an institutionalization of the interested denunciation in the courts against all those who favored abortion. With the key, the threat of a fine of 10,000 dollars (8,400 euros), which causes the alarm of all the organizations helping women in distress.
The patient, of course, cannot be prosecuted. On the other hand, the medical and administrative staff in the clinics, the psychologists, the taxi driver who drove the patient to the site, very close to having participated in the financing of the operation, even a conciliatory priest: potentially, all could be targeted. .
Bypass of “Roe vs Wade”
In a statement, the Center for Reproductive Rights also underlines the certain risk of social and ethnic discrimination. “People struggling to make ends meet, people of color, and those living in rural areas, already facing the greatest obstacles in accessing medical care, will be the most affected by this law,” because of the additional costs required to obtain an abortion in a neighboring state.
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