A new American state restricts access to abortion. Idaho, in the northwest of the country, has passed a law authorizing civil lawsuits once morest health professionals performing voluntary terminations of pregnancy (abortion), the latest episode in a vast conservative offensive to trim the right to abortion in the country.
This law, signed Wednesday by the governor, the equivalent of a president in an American state, allows the families of women who have undergone an abortion as well as the parents to file a complaint once morest the clinics or doctors who carried out the intervention, even if the fetus is the result of rape. It is modeled following a similar law that has generated considerable controversy in Texas.
Idaho Governor Brad Little has claimed to be an ardent defender of the rights of “unborn babies”. But he worried that this law, which amounts to “delegating the power to private citizens to impose heavy fines (…) in order to escape the examination of the courts” will be declared unconstitutional. federal. Such an approach undermines institutions and “weakens our collective freedoms”, he warns in a letter addressed to local parliamentarians.
Taking up the arguments of critics of the Texas law, Governor Little notes that this type of law might end up turning once morest other rights dear to conservatives, such as the right to own and carry a firearm.
The court decision authorizing abortion is increasingly under attack
The new law has been denounced by human rights defenders as well as the White House, the seat of the US presidency. “Legislators have openly bragged regarding this law as a means malin to limit access to abortion” by circumventing justice, declared Lauren Bramwell, of a powerful civil rights organization, denouncing a text “irresponsible and politically motivated which will do harm”.
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki called the Texas law and its siblings a crude attempt to undermine the Supreme Court’s decision, the landmark “Roe v. Wade” of 1973, which guarantees the right of women to have an abortion during the first two trimesters of pregnancy. “Over the past six months, Texas law has had profoundly negative effects, forcing women to travel hundreds of miles to access care,” she said, noting that the impact of such laws is particularly strong on women with low incomes and living in rural areas.
Restrictive or on the contrary protective, bills on abortion are sweeping through hundreds of American state parliaments in anticipation of a decision by the Supreme Court in the coming months, likely to upset the legal framework in force for nearly 50 years. in the USA. A total of 1,844 measures related to contraception and abortion were introduced in 46 states between January 1 and March 15, counted the Guttmacher Research Institute, which campaigns for the right of women to control their bodies.