No one touch Roe v. Wade decision!

 

During last days has been kicked up a fuss by the Politico journal that published a leaked draft US Supreme Court opinion on the Mississippi case that would overturn the Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973), a landmark decision by which the Court ruled that the Constitution of the United States protects a pregnant woman's liberty to choose to have an abortion without excessive government restriction. This case was a turning point in women's reproductive rights and has remained a hot-button issue within United States politics ever since. The Roe v. Wade decision held that a woman, with her doctor, could choose abortion in earlier months of pregnancy without legal restriction, based primarily on the right to privacy

Roe v. Wade is a legal case in which the SCOTUS on January 22, 1973, ruled (7–2) that unduly restrictive state regulation of abortion is unconstitutional. In a majority opinion written by Justice Blackmun, the Court held that a set of Texas statutes criminalizing abortion in most instances violated a woman’s constitutional right of privacy, which it found to be implicit in the liberty guarantee of the due process clause of the 14th Amendment (“…nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”). Blackmun noted that only a “compelling state interest” justifies regulations limiting “fundamental rights” such as privacy and that legislators must therefore draw statutes narrowly “to express only the legitimate state interests at stake.” The Court then attempted to balance the state’s distinct compelling interests in the health of pregnant women and in the potential life of fetuses. It placed the point after which a state’s compelling interest in the pregnant woman’s health would allow it to regulate abortion “at approximately the end of the first trimester” of pregnancy. With regard to the fetus, the Court located that point at “capability of meaningful life outside the mother’s womb,” or viability, which occurs at about 24 weeks of pregnancy.

The decision struck down many U.S. federal and state abortion laws. In September it has been registered a case challenging the constitutionality of a Mississipi law banning abortion after 15 weeks with all the aftermath developments unfold. Many protests in the streets, supported by Human Rights Watch,  Amnesty International and the Global Justice Center, underline that banning abortion would go to worsen the negative impact on the health of pregnant people, especially on marginalized groups, such as people living in economic poverty, young people, and Black, Indigenous, and other people of color. These populations already face significant barriers accessing abortion care and recording many cases of unsafe abortions.

The greatest threat in fact is to get the unpopular results of countries such as Romania, South Africa, El Salvador, and Ecuador where there is a statistical relationship between restrictive abortion legislation and increases in maternal mortality.

Access to life and lawful abortion services is firmly rooted in the rights to life, to non-discrimination, to be free from torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, and to privacy, among others. These rights are recognized in international human rights treaties ratified by the US, especially art. 6 of the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, art. 12 of the 1979 “UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discriminations Against Women”,  the 1994 “Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women”, known as the Convention of Belém do Pará, focused on the violence against women in the domestic and public sphere.

It has been signaled that in the Mississippi case, the judges were prepared to overturn the landmark ruling that protects abortion access in the US, by this way stepping out the international standards about the right of abortion to be determined and safely applied. The claimed purposes for banning abortion are to preserve the life of the fetus, to protect the life of the mother, to create deterrence against future abortions, and avoiding injuring the mother's ability to have children..

 Recently, Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico have, by legislative changes or judicial rulings, either decriminalized abortion or loosened restrictions, better protecting women’s health and rights.

It has been clamorous how just a draft opinion has had the power to sting public opinion and mobilize civil society although abortion is still legal in the US, remaining a constitutional and human right proclaiming the still ongoing solidity of the claimed principles and results of ideological fights made by the ’68 movements all around the world, not forgetting that abortion rights are an integral part of the pregnancy rights and every woman should have the chance to choose if putting it forward or to stop it, if they can't afford for their children a safe family or, even worse, they are victim of rapes and sexual abuses, as the health of the child has the same importance of that of the mother and this tie will determine for several years the mental and general health conditions of the kid.