US comes closer to abolition of the abortion rights

What seemed unimaginable for decades came a step closer on Wednesday: the abolition of the right to abortion in the United States.

In a two-hour session, the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against a Mississippi State abortion bill, which reduces the legal limit for termination of pregnancy to fifteen weeks. Analysts and journalists heard in the questions of the conservative judges at the court a tendency to approve that law. That would be the court ruling from 1973, the Roe v. Wade, which gave American women the constitutional right to choose abortion nationwide as long as the fetus is not viable (up to 24 weeks), de facto dismisses the table.

In that scenario, the court would pave the way for new restrictions on women’s right to self-determination in many states, where Republican majorities already have laws in place to make abortion impossible in practice. With the current large conservative majority of six in the court – against three progressive judges – the opponents of abortion have a unique opportunity to settle a decades-long social-ideological struggle in their favor.

It was precisely the diversity of points of view in the hearing on Wednesday that gave the impression that the conservative judges could always find an argument to severely restrict or abolish the right to abortion.

Long-serving conservative judges Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have never left a misunderstanding: they want the precedent of Roe vs. Destroy Wade. One of the three new conservative judges appointed by former President Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, seemed to agree with this idea. He argued that the court should remain neutral on the question of abortion and leave abortion policy to the legislators in the individual states or the National Congress. He also listed a series of cases in which the court reverted to a previous ruling.

The last appointed Judge, Amy Coney Barrett, an orthodox Christian, suggested that women who do not want to raise their child could take other paths, such as offering the child for adoption. The conservative president of the court, John Roberts, who has also moved figuratively to the middle because of the new composition, tried to stay away from the nullification of Roe vs. Wade by putting the question of the term at the heart of his questions. In doing so, he seemed to want to avoid the question of whether abortion could be banned.

Since the three progressive judges announced the precedent of Roe vs. The question is whether other conservative judges want to follow Roberts ‘ middle ground. If not, then according to the Guttmacher Institute, a Knowledge Center for abortion, 26 states will attempt to declare abortion illegal after June 2022, if the court makes a ruling and indeed crosses a line with Roe vs. Wade. In eleven states, so-called ‘heart rate’laws are already in place for this scenario, with a limit of six weeks. This is the first moment when the heartbeat of a fetus can be heard, but also a moment when many women do not yet realize that they are pregnant.