After the Supreme Court on Friday, June 24, repealed the Roe vs. Wade ruling in favor of abortion rights in the United States, and the decision of the court's conservative judges was upheld by a vote of six to three, the fight for women's rights begins again, alongside thousands of demonstrations across the country.
In response to this, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, said that the Supreme Court's decision is "mortally serious."
"Today, the Republican-controlled Supreme Court has achieved the Republican Party's dark and extreme goal of taking away women's right to make their own reproductive health decisions. Because of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, the Republican Party and their supermajority on the Supreme Court, American women today have less freedom than their mothers did," the Democrat said.
He explained that with Roe out of the way, radical Republicans will continue their crusade to criminalize health care freedom.
"In Congress, Republicans are plotting a nationwide abortion ban. In the states, Republicans want to arrest doctors for providing reproductive care and women for terminating a pregnancy. Republican Party extremists are even threatening to criminalize contraception, as well as in vitro fertilization and post-miscarriage care," she stressed.
In this regard, she recalled that a woman's fundamental health decisions are her own, in consultation with her doctor and her loved ones, "not to be dictated by far-right politicians."
"While Republicans seek to punish and control women, Democrats will continue to fight fiercely to enshrine Roe v. Wade into law," she said.
"This cruel ruling is outrageous and heartbreaking. But make no mistake: the rights of women and all Americans are on the ballot this November," she said.
It is worth noting that Missouri was the first state to ban abortion just minutes after the ruling.
The case «Roe vs. Wade»
The fight for women's reproductive rights and their right to make decisions about their own bodies began in a historic way in American law with a name that will now gain even more strength: Norma McCorvey, a waitress from Dallas who in the 1970s sued Henry Wade, the district attorney for Texas, in a historic process to claim her right to have an abortion.
In 1973, Texas law stated that abortion was prohibited, but 22-year-old Norma McCorvey, now known as Jane Roe, a pseudonym used in the laws to protect the plaintiff, who did not want to be pregnant due to financial problems, turned upside down the laws that prohibited it not only in that state but also made it a constitutional right throughout the United States.
Hence the lawsuit that served to constitutionally legalize abortion in the United States acquired its name, "Roe vs. Wade."
Although in 1973 abortion was already approved in some states of the United States, such as California and New York, in addition to four other states, it was limited in another 16 states, such as Texas, the place where Jane Roe lived.
It was in 1968 when Ronald Reagan, then Republican governor of California, signed the "Therapeutic Abortion Act" while in 1970 in New York City, the right to abortion was signed without the need for women to give any kind of explanation to the authorities as long as it was carried out within the first two trimesters of pregnancy.
By July 1, 1970, the first abortion clinic was reportedly opened in New York City.
In January 1973 the federal judges in the Northern District of Texas finally ruled seven votes to two in favor of the plaintiff.
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