The Senate of USA failed on Wednesday to pass a law guaranteeing access to abortion throughout the country, at a time when this right is seriously threatened by an upcoming Supreme Court ruling.
The vote was practically symbolic since the Democrats did not have the 60 votes required to approve the text. But the initiative blocked by the Republican senators is part of a larger battle of the Democrats led by President Joe Biden to shield the right to abortion.
“For the first time in 50 years, a conservative majority, an extreme majority of the Supreme Court is about to decree that women have no control over their own bodies,” warned the head of the Democrats of the SenateChuck Schumer, just before the vote.
The Republicans opposed this bill en bloc, accusing the Democrats, through their leader Mitch McConnell, of wanting to offer “abortions on demand”. Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, already the gravedigger of several major Biden initiatives, voted with the Republican opposition.
The US president criticized the result of the vote.
“Republicans in Congress – none of whom voted for this bill – have chosen to oppose the right of American women to make the most personal decisions about their bodies, their families and their lives,” he said in a statement. release.
His party organized this vote after the extraordinary leak, on May 2, of a draft ruling of the Supreme Court, according to which the highest US court was preparing to reverse the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade, which enshrines the right to abortion throughout the country.
If the Supreme Court reversed that case law, each state would be free to prohibit or authorize the voluntary termination of pregnancy.
Twenty conservative states have already promised to recriminalize abortion.
“My Body, My Choice”
To the cries of “my body, my choice”, some thirty members of the House of Representatives, where the bill rejected in the Senate had been adopted in September, went to see the vote in the High camera to contest its failure. Within this group, there are several legislators who publicly said they had an abortion.
Since the draft ruling of the Supreme Court was known, groups of people, more or less dense, come every afternoon to express their anger in front of the American temple of law, an imposing white marble building now protected by a fence.
And some demonstrators even protest in front of the residence of the conservative judges of the Court.
Several progressive organizations have called for a mass march on May 14 in the United States to protect access to abortion.
Four major events are planned in Washington, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and hundreds of rallies are planned across the country.
Biden vowed to get personally involved in the battle, urging Americans to “elect candidates for” abortion rights in the November 8 midterm elections.
In this way, he wants to expand the majority of Democrats in the Senate, in the hope of later being able to pass a federal law that protects access to abortion.
But midterm elections are always very dangerous for the ruling party, and the Democrats may very well lose their narrow majorities in Congress.
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