Few sentences have had such significance in the lives of people, and especially women, as the one pronounced by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1973 defending the constitutional right to interrupt pregnancies before the 23-month period in which the fetus it is considered already viable. As the highest arbiter of the Constitution, the effects of his sentences have repercussions beyond the country and influence similar bodies throughout the democratic world. Hence the expectation that surrounds the judicial hearing initiated this past week on a legislation of the State of Mississippi that seeks to end the right to abortion established 50 years ago by the case. Roe vs. WadeThat is the name by which a sentence that made history and changed the world is known.
The court’s decision will not take place until the end of the judicial course, in the summer of 2022, when the campaign for the mid-term elections will be underway, in which the entire House of Representatives and numerous positions of governor of the states. The composition of the court is unusual, six Republican justices to three Democrats, instead of the usual correlation of forces of six to five. Only three of the lifetime magistrates are women (two Democrats and one Republican) and three have been appointed by Donald Trump. It is the most reactionary court since the time before Franklin D. Roosevelt, with a majority so overwhelming as to disarm any attempt at conciliation by the president, in this case Republican Judge John Roberts, who would like to agree with Mississippi without annulling the jurisprudence , by lowering the abortion limit from 23 to 15 months.
The polls reflect a majority of citizens, over 60%, in favor of maintaining the current abortion jurisprudence. In addition to the presidency, the Democrats have control of both Houses. And yet, thanks to Republican manipulation of counter-majority systems, Barack Obama was only able to appoint two justices in his two terms while Trump appointed three in his only term. Trumpism has managed to reverse the meaning of democracy.
Essential when sentencing is respect for the jurisprudence of the court itself (called stare decisis, keep the decision in Latin), which only allows the annulment of a previous sentence in the event of error or flagrant discrepancy with the Constitution, as was the case with numerous resolutions prior to the civil war that paid for slavery.
A total cancellation of Roe vs.Wade it will define a scandalous politicization of the court, turned into a true government of the judges, and will affect its prestige and democracy itself. A long score of republican states will be able to prohibit abortion. The country will remain as divided and polarized, even geographically, as on the eve of the civil war.
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