Anti-abortion protesters during a "March for Life" in Washington in 2014. - AFP PHOTO / Saul LOEB

More than 200 members of the US Congress sent a letter to the Supreme Court on Thursday asking it to study an annulment of the 1973 "Roe v Wade" decision that legalized abortion. Of the 207 signatories, only two are Democrats.

Forty of them are senators while the rest sit in the House of Representatives, said the Washington Post . Elected officials express their support for a 2014 Louisiana state law that limits access to abortion.

207 Members of Congress (39 Republican Senators, 166 House Republicans and 2 Democrats Lipinski-IL and Peterson-MN) signed amicus brief in March 4 Louisiana abortion law Supreme Court case urging #SCOTUS to reconsider its Roe c. Wade abortion ruling. https://t.co/CaTEtsjNUU pic.twitter.com/6jnlUaNqQm

- Craig Caplan (@CraigCaplan) January 2, 2020

60% of Americans are pro-choice

Suspended in February 2019, this law will be examined by the United States Supreme Court next March. This text would oblige volunteer doctors to be registered in hospitals in order to perform abortions in a clinic. The measure would cause the closure of many of them and would greatly complicate access to abortion for residents of Louisiana, alert health professionals.

In 2018, a college of the fifth circuit court of appeal - a U.S. federal court of appeal - had confirmed the validity of the legislation. But the 207 authors of the letter consider that "the difficulties encountered in determining the share of the population concerned, the scale of the access problems and the degree of the unacceptable aspect of the situation illustrates the impracticability" of the decision which had formalized the right to abortion.

"This letter unfortunately shows that not only are our rights really threatened, but that we have also reached a point where a minority is ready to deprive us of our freedoms against the opinion of the majority," deplores a pro-choice activist, Stephanie Schriock. Last July, a poll indicated that 60% of Americans were in favor of the right to abortion. This is the highest figure for more than 20 years.

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