Tuesday, May 3, Oklahoma was added to the already long list of American states on the verge of banning or severely limiting abortion. “I represent all four million Oklahoma residents who overwhelmingly want to protect unborn children”wrote on Twitter Kevin Stitt, the Republican governor, enacting the text voted by State Parliament Thursday, April 28.
“I want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country”, he said, using the expression consecrated by Americans opposed to voluntary terminations of pregnancy (abortion). The text provides for medical exceptions, but not in the case of rape or incest.
This conservative state had been welcoming thousands of Texan women seeking abortions for several months, after the passage of a similar text in this neighboring state. Since September 2021 already, Texas has implemented a law prohibiting all abortions from the moment when a heartbeat of the embryo is perceptible on ultrasound, approximately four weeks after fertilization. The legality of similar texts in other States has been studied by the Supreme Court of the United States for several months.
Twenty-three conservative states ready to ban abortion
But, Monday evening, publication by the newspaper Politico of a draft decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on this subject indicates that the highest American court would be on the point of handing over to the States the power to authorize, or not, abortions, nearly fifty years after having made them legal throughout the country.
The leak of this document, the authenticity of which was confirmed by the Court, which recalled that it was not about the final decision, had the effect of a bomb in Washington and pushed Democratic President Joe Biden to recall his support for the right to abortion. “I believe that women’s right to choose is fundamental”he said, adding that he would study “Options for an Administration Response to the Attack on Abortion”.
If the highest court were to overturn the case law Roe v. wadethe country would return to the situation before 1973 when each state was free to prohibit or authorize abortion. At least twenty-three conservative statesmostly in the center and south of the country such as Wyoming, Tennessee or South Carolina are ready to ban abortion altogether.