The US Senate was preparing to vote on Wednesday on a law guaranteeing access to abortion throughout the country, an initiative doomed to failure, but which is part of a broader fight to protect this right, which is strongly threatened. by a decision of the Supreme Court.
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“Today’s vote is one of the most important in the coming decades,” said Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer in the Chamber.
“Because for the first time in 50 years, a conservative majority, an extreme majority of the Supreme Court is about to decree that women do not have control over their own bodies”, he warned, the serious tone.
AFP
The leader of the Senate Democrats, Chuck Schumer.
Around 3:00 p.m. local time (7:00 p.m. GMT), the 100 senators of the US Congress will have to decide whether or not to guarantee the right to abortion across the United States.
Barring a huge surprise, this vote will fail, the majority of Democrats in the Senate being too narrow to allow them to adopt such a text – they would need a majority increased by 60 votes out of 100.
However, the Republicans oppose this initiative as a whole, accusing the Democrats, through the voice of their leader Mitch McConnell, of wanting, with this text, to offer “abortions on demand”.
Joe Biden’s party was keen to organize this vote after the extraordinary leak on May 2 of a draft Supreme Court decision, according to which the American temple of law was preparing to cancel access to the abortion.
If the Supreme Court were to strike down the case law that has founded the right to abortion in the United States since 1973, as the revelation of a draft judgment suggested this week, each state would be free to prohibit or to allow abortion. About 20 conservative states have already promised to make it illegal.
Since the revelation of this draft judgment, groups – more or less dense – come every evening to shout their anger in front of the Supreme Court, an imposing white marble building now protected by a fence.
The only other option currently available to abortion rights advocates to protect it would be to change Senate rules to lower the number of votes needed to pass such a law.
“Our colleagues in the Senate have the power to put an end to what could cause immense suffering with a simple gesture,” pleaded Cori Bush, an elected Democrat in the House who publicly spoke about her abortion.
But Republicans and a handful of elected officials from Joe Biden’s camp oppose this scenario.
Anxious to weigh in on the debate, several major progressive organizations have called on Americans to march en masse on May 14 across the United States.
Four major marches are held in Washington, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, and hundreds of rallies across the rest of the country.
US President Joe Biden has also promised to get personally involved in the battle and urged Americans to “choose candidates in favor” of the right to abortion in the midterm legislative elections on November 8.
He thus wishes to enlarge the majority of Democrats in the Senate, with the hope of then being able to pass this federal law protecting access to abortion.
But these elections are always very dangerous for the power in place, and it is very possible that the Democrats will on the contrary lose their slim majorities in Congress during the ballot.
Reference-www.tvanouvelles.ca