Monday, October 25, 2021

The Guardian View on US Abortion Laws: Freedoms Hanging by a Thread

THE GUARDIAN – EDITORIAL: By allowing the Texas law banning abortions after six weeks to stand, the supreme court has joined the attack

Protesters march in Austin, Texas, against the state’s abortion laws. Photograph: AFP/Getty

The announcement by the US supreme court that Texas’s new law banning abortions after six weeks would be allowed to stand, until it hears the federal government’s case against it on 1 November, was a blow to anyone hoping that the court might block attempts to remove women’s constitutional right to abortion. The 1973 decision that established this right, Roe v Wade, is a landmark in the history of the court.

The challenge brought by the Biden administration aims to overturn the Texas law on grounds that the state has violated the court’s authority. By outsourcing enforcement of its abortion ban to private citizens, who since September have been allowed to sue anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion, Texas legislators have sought “to evade the traditional mechanisms for judicial review”, the suit states. The justice department argues that this is a dangerous precedent with the potential to undermine other supreme court decisions. While some employers are ffering to relocate staff to other states, the women most likely to be harmed by the ban are the poorest and least mobile, who in Texas are disproportionately women of colour. » | Editorial | Monday, October 25, 2021

Keep politics out of medical matters! The criminalisation of abortions does not affect the rich and privileged – they can afford to travel out of state, or even abroad, to get their abortions. This draconian law affects only the poor and under-privileged, who might well be forced to revert to the Victorian solution: knitting needles and bottles of gin! – © Mark