Americans have reacted with outrage after the Supreme Court scrapped Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that had ensured women had a legal right to abortion.
One a day that the court delivered a ruling perhaps not matched in its impact since the decisions of the Civil Rights era, activists started gathering outside the Supreme Court in Washington where the ruling was handed down.
The court, in a 6-3 ruling powered by its conservative majority that had been created by Donald Trump, upheld a Republican-backed Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks.
“We know you may be feeling a lot of things right now — hurt, anger, confusion. Whatever you feel is OK. We’re here with you — and we’ll never stop fighting for you,” the group Planned Parentood said in a tweet.
“The Supreme Court's vicious decision to overturn Roe v Wade is one of the darkest moments in the history of this nation,” said New York Attorney General Letitia James.
“Make no mistake: While other states strip away the fundamental right to choose, New York will always be a safe haven for anyone seeking an abortion.”
Michelle Obama said she was heartbroken by the decision, overturning a 50 year precedent. Her husband, Barack Obama, said the decision “relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues—attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans”.
Yet the sense of outcry was felt also among millions of ordinary citizens, from coast to coast, and across the heartland. Women in more than 30 states, many of them in the South will now, struggle to find access to abortion.
In Mississippi, the lone clinic that provided abortions, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, better known as the Pink House, will be shifting operations to New Mexico, almost 1,000 miles away. Indeed, abortion bans in Kentucky, Louisiana and South Dakota went into effect immediately after the decision.
The writer and columinst Christy Stoop, a reporter with Religion Dispatches, said: “Roe being overturned is the worst sort of “I told you so” moment. There was never a real question of why white evangelicals embraced Trump. He did what they wanted.”
She added: “Will the press start treating the Christian Right like a serious threat to democracy and human rights now?”
Caroline Kitchener, a writer for the Washington Post who covers abortion said patients in Texas will have to drive an average of 542 miles to reach the nearest abortion clinic, based on data from the Guttmacher Institute
She said: “For patients in Louisiana, the one-way trip will be 666 miles. In Mississippi, 495 miles.”
Vinay Kumaran a transplant Surgeon in Richmond Virginia said America was “Marching confidently into the past”.
Robin Marty, communications Director for the West Alabama Women's Centre and a freelance reporter and the author of the book “Handbook for a Post-Roe America, said people were already making plans to raise money to send women out of state. Alabama is one of dozens of states where abortion is now illegal.
“We are making a pool to send our currently booked patients out of state. If you want to cover expenses, please hit this, “ she wrote.
