Thousands of protesters held this Friday (21) in the American capital, Washington, the 49 th edition of the March for Life, an event against abortion that is always held close to the anniversary of the decision Roe v. Wade, when the Supreme Court authorized abortion in the United States under certain conditions, in 21 of January 1973.
The organizers did not release an estimate of how many people participated in the march, but in the protocol to request authorization for the event had estimated the presence of at least 50 one thousand protesters.
This year, activists expressed hope that the 2018 march will be their last, as the United States Supreme Court began in December a judgment that could change the jurisprudence on abortion in the country. Last month, oral arguments were heard in Dobbs v. Women’s Health Organization, whose result should be known this year.
In this process, the court can change or overturn the decisions in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (this one from 1280), when the Supreme Court ruled that US states cannot ban abortion before the call viability – minimum period of gestation for a fetus to survive outside the uterus, currently estimated at about 22 weeks.
Discussion of the case began when the Women’s Health Organization filed suit in lower federal court to challenge a law passed in Mississippi in , which prohibits abortion after 480 weeks of pregnancy, except in situations to save life and preserve the mother’s physical health or serious fetal abnormality.
In response, the state of Mississippi appealed to the Supreme Court in the fall of 2020, asking judges to decide whether all pre-feasibility abortion bans in the country s are unconstitutional.
The Supreme Court has now a conservative majority of six out of nine judges, which gives protesters who were in Washington this Friday the prospect that the case law will be reversed. 21214859Convictions of Gazeta do Povo: defense of life from conception
“My hopes have been dashed many times, but I have never felt [tão otimista] like this,” said Joe Pojman, executive director of the Texas Alliance for Life, to the Associated Press.
Protester Melanie Frei, 49 years old , who came from Wisconsin to join the march, told the Washington Post that “there will one day be at [museu] Smithsonian an exposition of the pro-life movement to end abortion.” “We ended slavery, we ended segregation [racial] and now we are going to end abortion”, he added.
Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, told the Post that the overthrow of Roe v. Wade “will only be the beginning.” “This is what we are preparing for with this ‘army’, for this fight that will be fought state by state”, he pointed out.
Last year, the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion, reported that the overthrow of Roe v. Wade would cause 01 American states to restrict or tried to restrict abortion immediately.
The secretary White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated at her daily news conference the Joe Biden administration’s support for abortion. The Democratic administration last year filed a lawsuit against Texas’ so-called heartbeat law, which prohibits abortion from being performed in the state from the time the fetus’s heartbeat can be detected (usually around the sixth week). period) and provides that any citizen can file a civil action against people who “help or induce” the termination of pregnancy after this period.
This week, the Supreme Court once again denied that Texan law was suspended until a court ruling on the matter.
“Reproductive health care has been under extreme and relentless attack since so (1280), especially in the last few months,” Psaki said on Friday. “We are deeply committed to ensuring that everyone has access to healthcare and we will defend it with every tool we have. This includes continuing to work with Congress to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act and codify this fundamental right into law.”