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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Observer editorial

The Observer view on US abortion rights

An anti-abortion activist outside the Jackson Women's Health Organization, Mississippi's last remaining abortion clinic
An anti-abortion activist outside the Jackson Women's Health Organization, Mississippi's last remaining abortion clinic. Photograph: Rogelio V Solis/AP

Universal access to abortion has been a constitutional right guaranteed to all women in the US since the 1973 supreme court Roe v Wade ruling. But in some states, this has been chipped away through stringent restrictions on abortion clinics and the doctors who practise in them. There is only one remaining abortion clinic in the whole of Mississippi, for example, making access to abortion a theoretical rather than a practical right for most women in that state.

Now a conservative supreme court looks set to scrap this universal right, rolling back access to abortion for many more women across the US. A draft court ruling leaked last week, written by Justice Samuel Alito and reportedly supported by a majority of the court, would overturn Roe v Wade. It argues that it was “egregiously wrong” from the start in making this a constitutional issue and that laws on abortion should be determined by federal and state legislators rather than the supreme court.

Several Republican states have already passed highly restrictive abortion laws in anticipation of this ruling, meaning most abortions will be illegal in around 25 states in the likely event the court overturns Roe v Wade. This is estimated to mean 18 million women of child-bearing age will be more than 200 miles from an abortion provider, effectively removing access for the many who cannot afford to travel.

Forcing women to give birth after becoming pregnant, even in the case of incest and rape, would represent an extraordinary rollback of their reproductive rights in one of the world’s richest democracies. History tells us there is no way to ban abortion – only safe access to abortion. Women will always resort to dangerous methods and backstreet clinics to terminate unwanted pregnancies if there is no other way and some will lose their lives as a result. Restricting access to abortion is associated with higher infant and maternal mortality – and the US already has the worst rates among wealthier countries – and higher rates of poverty. Women who seek illegal abortions, and those who help them, could find themselves subject to the harshest of punishments; in Texas, anyone performing an abortion could be tried for murder and face a life sentence in prison.

If the US restricts abortion rights, it will go against the international trends towards liberalisation of abortion, joining a small club dominated by countries such as Poland, where a rightwing authoritarian government has introduced the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe. There are some uniquely American factors that have left women’s reproductive rights exposed. American women have long enjoyed fewer rights than their British and European counterparts, for example in relation to pregnancy and maternity discrimination. The American religious right has long made overturning abortion rights through a conservative majority on the supreme court its key objective. And the fact that progressive presidents and legislators have never spent the political capital that would have been required to enshrine women’s reproductive rights in legislation means that Roe v Wade was always going to be vulnerable to challenge once the court swung rightwards.

So much of women’s oppression is based on their reproductive biology: on taking away their choices, forcing them to continue with unwanted pregnancies and punishing them economically for having children. In the UK, a woman is killed by a man every three days, rape convictions are at a historic low and most women in prison are survivors of domestic abuse. What is happening in the US shows the danger of taking women’s rights for granted: what is hard won can also be lost.

  • Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 300 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk

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