United States: Joe Biden denounces Supreme Court decision on abortion in Texas
US President Joe Biden this Thursday, September 2, 2021 at the White House in Washington.
© JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS
Text by: RFI Follow
4 min
Victory for the Conservatives and for Donald Trump.
The highest American court has decided to let Texas apply the country's most restrictive abortion law.
Abortion is prohibited from the first heartbeat of the embryo.
President Joe Biden this Thursday, September 2 blasted the Supreme Court's decision as "
an unprecedented attack on the constitutional rights of women
".
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The decision of the American Supreme Court "
causes unconstitutional chaos
" and "
insults the rule of law,
" said the American president in a vitriolic statement. Joe Biden promises "
an immediate response
" from his government, called on to find "
measures to ensure that women in Texas have access to safe and legal abortions
". The law of Texas, which prohibits abortions once the heartbeat of the embryo is detected, "
is so extreme that it does not provide for an exception in case of rape or incest
", hammered the tenant of the White House.
The Supreme Court's ruling overnight is an unprecedented assault on constitutional rights under Roe v.
Wade.
Complete strangers will now be empowered to inject themselves in the most private of health decisions.
The law does not even allow exceptions in cases of rape or incest.
- President Biden (@POTUS) September 2, 2021
The Supreme Court has not validated this Texas law, but while waiting to examine it to judge its constitutionality, it refuses to suspend its application as demanded by defenders of the right to abortion.
The Court, now endowed with a conservative majority, since the appointments of Donald Trump, invokes "
questions of complex and new procedures
" in a decision published just before midnight.
In Texas, since September 1, women no longer have the right to abort, even in cases of rape or incest, from six weeks of pregnancy, long before many realize they are pregnant. .
A dozen other conservative states have passed similar texts since 2019, but they have never been applied, easily challenged in court by family planning organizations.
Denial
Texas is an exception, because it is not the government that is responsible for enforcing the law, but individuals encouraged to report, to prosecute those suspected of helping a woman to have an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.
A bonus of 10,000 dollars is even provided for informers.
And according to legal experts, this makes this law much more difficult to attack.
This helps to set up a kind of mob justice.
Any citizen of any state in the country can bring a civil complaint against people they suspect of helping women to have abortions.
This of course concerns caregivers who perform abortions, but it can also concern a taxi driver or someone who pays the expenses of a person who has had an abortion.
This aims to create a climate of fear and intimidation so that women no longer have the possibility of having an abortion.
Tarah Demant (Amnesty International) on the anti-abortion law in Texas
Anastasia becchio
► Press review of the Americas: The Supreme Court lets Texas apply its law
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United States
Womens rights
Health and medicine