Abortion rights in the United States targeted by a minority coup

Analyse. We will have to wait until June to find out if the conservative majority of the United States Supreme Court intends to reverse half a century of case law on the right to abortion. The version of the judgment published on Monday May 2 by the site Politico leaves little doubt for the moment as to its intentions, which are to entrust it to the assessment of the States. They are both the product of a concerted and methodical offensive actively supported by the American reactionary current for decades, and the fruit of exceptional circumstances linked to each other by a common thread: the temptation of a minority of impose its choices on the greatest number.

The fight against the right of women to freely dispose of their bodies was from the start an issue of the cultural war which gradually won the United States at the end of the 20th century.^e century. It has become all the more central as the religious right has gradually lost its footing in another major conflict, that of the rights recognized for homosexuals, starting with that of marriage, sanctuary in 2015 by the Supreme Court. Composed of nine judges appointed for life by the President of the United States on the condition of being confirmed by the Senate alone, this Court had then accompanied a major evolution of American society, including in the various republican chapels.

The draft judgment which “leaked” in Politico constitutes the culmination of a remarkable effort, of which the constitution of a lobby of conservative jurists, the Federalist Society, in 1982, is the best illustration. To avoid unpleasant surprises on the part of judges appointed by Republican presidents (five of the six conservative judges had supported the historic Roe v. Wade judgment in 1973), a process of selecting candidates judged to be of absolute loyalty to the cause was driven. It culminated in the presidency of Donald Trump. It is on the basis of the only list of candidates established by the Federalist Society that the latter chose the three judges who accentuated the orientation of the highest judicial body in the country now dominated by six conservatives facing three progressives appointed by Democratic presidents.

The determination of the American reactionary current is, however, only shared by a minority of American opinion, as the results of the polls invariably show. If the question of abortion, both intimate and painful, continues to divide Americans, like that of the cases for which it can be considered, the 1973 judgment continues to achieve consensus. A clear majority (54%) wants it to be maintained in a poll published on May 2 by the Washington Post, against only 28% who are opposed to it.

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