US prepares for Supreme Court showdown on abortion rights | Women’s Rights News

Washington, DC – In 1962, Barbara Lee was a 16-year-old student at San Fernando High School in Los Angeles, California.

She was the only black girl on the cheerleading team and an aspiring pianist who attended a Catholic church and received top marks. But when she missed her period and realized she might be pregnant, all of that was suddenly in danger.

“I was confused, scared and insecure because I didn’t know if I was pregnant or not. I didn’t know what to do, ”recalled Lee, now 75 and a prominent member of the US House of Representatives, during a recent congressional hearing.

Lee’s experience came a little over 10 years before the United States Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide in its landmark 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade. It was a time when many women and girls were forced to take risky measures in order to terminate their pregnancies.

Lee said her mother sent her to El Paso, Texas, under the care of a close friend who had taken her to a “back alley” clinic in Mexico for an abortion. “I was embarrassed and I thought if someone found out, my life would be destroyed,” she recalls.

Rep. Barbara Lee testifies to her experience of having an abortion in Mexico in the 1960s at the age of 16 [Jacquelyn Martin/AP Photo]

Now, decades later, suffragette in the US say hard-won abortion rights are in jeopardy as the nation’s Supreme Court hears an abortion case in Mississippi that could challenge Roe against Wade.

With a conservative majority, the US Supreme Court could be on the verge of overturning this historic ruling – a prospect that will put abortion at the center of US politics and spark mass protests across the country.

“We cannot and will not go back to those days before Roe,” Lee said.

Conservative judges

There is no federal law in the United States that guarantees the right to abortion.

Instead, the Supreme Court rulings, starting with Roe v. Wade, severely limit how states can regulate the process. Essentially, this ruling says states cannot prohibit abortions before a fetus is viable outside the uterus or after about 24 weeks.

But the composition of the nine-member Supreme Court has changed significantly with the appointment of three Conservative judges under former President Donald Trump.

The postponement began at the end of President Barack Obama’s tenure in 2016, when Conservative Judge Antonin Scalia suddenly died and the Senate Republicans refused to confirm Obama’s candidate for the court on the grounds that it was too close the upcoming presidential election, which Trump won.

During Trump’s tenure, three Conservative judges joined the court: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The latter, Coney Barrett, was controversially appointed just days before the 2020 election, which Trump lost to President Joe Biden, replacing feminist icon Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

A new Conservative majority of 6: 3 controls the US Supreme Court [Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP Pool]

That swung the court from a 5-4 centrist majority to a 6-3 conservative majority. Barrett’s appointment was the culmination of a long effort by anti-abortionists to put Conservatives on the federal justice bank who would overthrow Roe against Wade.

Now anti-abortion activists are hoping the court will act, said Mallory Quigley, vice president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion group.

“The entire political strategy of the movement since the 1970s has been to get the right people into elected offices, both in the White House and in the Senate, to appoint and approve judges as President Trump did to the court,” Quigley said .

Roe v Wade, she told Al Jazeera, was a “profound legal assault” that has “handcuffed properly elected state lawmakers to pass laws that reflect the will of the people.”

Falls in Mississippi, Texas

At the heart of the upcoming Supreme Court showdown is a case over a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks.

The Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the state’s only licensed abortion clinic, challenged the law as unconstitutional and won it in a US district court.

The state has appealed, and the Supreme Court, which goes directly against Roe v Wade, has agreed to rule on whether abortion restrictions like those in Mississippi are unconstitutional. Oral arguments are expected to be heard on December 1st.

Following the example of Mississippi, other Republican-led states are pushing new abortion restrictions.

Texas recently passed a law that effectively bans abortions after six weeks, often before a woman knows she is pregnant. The law also allows anyone to file a $ 10,000 compensation claim against a doctor or anyone else who helps with an abortion.

“Texas law is a terrifying kind of bounty hunter law that allows anyone across the country to challenge not just someone who is performing an abortion, but anyone who supports and supports it,” said Marge Baker, executive vice president of People for the American Way (PFAW), a civil rights organization.

As a result, many Texas abortion clinics have stopped providing abortion services – and proponents have warned that black and other women of color, and members of low-income communities, will be hardest hit. Many women travel to other states where abortions are still legal to get the procedure.

The US Department of Justice has challenged Texas law and a US district judge ruled it unconstitutional. But the Conservative Fifth District Court of Appeals in New Orleans overruled the lower court and allowed the law to stand for the time being.

“This is a transformative moment,” Baker told Al Jazeera. “Voters are waking up and realizing the difference their vote is making for seats on this court, which is having a huge impact on their lives.”

Women marched outside the Texas State Capitol in Austin on October 2 against the law banning most abortions in the state [Stephen Spillman/AP Photo]

‘Critical time’

According to public opinion polls, a clear majority of people in the United States have supported the right to abortion for decades, although it remains a controversial issue that divides Americans sharply.

In a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in May, 59 percent of US adults said abortion should be legal, while 39 percent said it should be illegal in all or most of the cases. The divide was even sharper among Democrats and Republicans, with 80 percent of Democrats saying abortion should be legal, compared with just 35 percent of Republicans.

Suffragettes say the recent series of laws restricting abortion have made people realize that abortion rights are not guaranteed and have taken many onto the streets. Tens of thousands of women marched outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC and in cities across the country on October 2 to protest the new curbs.

Thousands of protesters marched up Pennsylvania Avenue to the U.S. Capitol to call on Congress to protect abortion rights on October 2nd [Jose Luis Magana/(AP Photo]

“This is a critical time for women,” said Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW), a grassroots feminist group founded in 1966 that advocates abortion rights.

“When you talk about Roe v Wade, it was 1973. For the past 40 years this has been a right that was only given to women and they never really had to think about it,” Nunes told Al Jazeera. “Now, for the first time in a long time, we see that right being taken away.”

Women’s initiatives like NOW, PFAW, the Women’s March Network, NARAL Pro-Choice America, Planned Parenthood and others are fighting back. “There is a huge coalition that is really looking into how we can protect these rights on several different levels,” said Nunes.

The organizations are pushing for legislation to codify the rulings of the Supreme Court. One such bill, known as the Women’s Health Protection Act, would guarantee women’s right to abortion nationwide.

The bill passed last month in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives but is facing roadblocks among Republicans in the US Senate. It is currently considered unlikely to be enforced before the upcoming 2022 midterm elections.

If the Supreme Court upholds the controversial new laws in Mississippi and Texas, proponents say the right to abortion will be a key political issue in the coming months. “There will be tremendous activism,” said Baker. “It’s just a huge issue that will drive voters to the polls.”