United States: Kamala Harris steps up to defend the right to abortion
United States Vice President Kamala Harris held a videoconference to defend the right to abortion, Thursday, May 19, 2022. © AP - Susan Walsh
Text by: RFI Follow
2 mins
Overturning the "Roe
versus
Wade" decision that legalized abortion in 1973 would be an "
extreme step backwards
", said Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the United States during a videoconference with medical actors when the Supreme Court seems determined to take away this constitutional right from American women.
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With our correspondent in Miami,
David Thomson
On a giant screen facing the Vice-President of the United States appear two representatives of family planning and two gynecologists.
They are on the front line in the war against women's rights, says Kamala Harris.
An “
extreme step backwards
”
One of them works in Texas, a
state where Republicans have already virtually banned abortion.
A taste of what awaits the United States next month if the Supreme Court overturns the "Roe
versus
Wade" judgment.
It would be an “
extreme step backwards
” warns Kamala Harris from the White House: “
The strength of our country is to have always believed in the extension of rights.
Not their restriction
,” she says.
Kamala Harris, the first woman vice-president of the United States, has already denounced several times this internal document of the Supreme Court published in early May on the
Politico
site and showing that a majority of its judges are in favor of the cancellation of the ruling that legalized abortion in 1973.
Other rights threatened?
Such a decision would also threaten other rights, according to Kamala Harris.
“
At the basis of the Roe judgment is the right to privacy,
she denounced.
It is this same right that protects the right to contraception and the right to marry the person you love, including a person of the same sex.
To cancel Roe is to make it possible to restrict these rights.
»
But concretely, the White House has no option to save the right to abortion.
Last week,
the Democrats were unable to pass
a law protecting the right to abortion due to a lack of sufficient majority.
► To listen:
Decryption: Abortion threatened in the United States, what can the Democrats do?
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Womens rights
Kamala Harris
Social issues
Health and medicine
United States