The emerging battle over abortion in the US
According to a report by two prominent pro-choice groups, Planned Parenthood and the Guttmacher Institute, more than 500 such restrictions have been introduced so far in 2021 - significantly more than a comparable period in any other year since the 1970s legalised abortion across the country. These restrictions run the gamut from a near-total ban in states like Arkansas and Oklahoma - where new laws would bar access to the procedure except under minimal circumstances - to states like Idaho and Texas that limit abortion after six weeks of pregnancy before many women might know they are pregnant.
Furthermore, state legislators in Arizona and Ohio have passed laws that will prohibit doctors from performing abortions based on a foetal diagnosis of Down Syndrome. Some of these laws allow exceptions in cases of medical emergencies, rape and incest. Republican lawmakers across the country pushing for more abortion restrictions are emboldened by a conservative-leaning Supreme Court shaped by former President Donald Trump's appointments, the most recent being Justice Amy Coney Barrett last year.
Experts say this slew of legislation at the state level is all part of a strategy by anti-abortion groups to get the Supreme Court to overturn the landmark ruling from 1973, Roe v Wade, that legalised abortion nationwide in the United States. It protects a woman's right to an abortion only until viability - the point at which a foetus can live outside the womb, generally by the start of the third trimester, 28 weeks into a pregnancy. Allie Frazier, 27, from the anti-abortion group Ohio Right to Life, says no life should be disposable. "We don't get to choose who lives or dies based on what is most convenient for us.''
However, conservative anti-abortion groups have put their weight behind bringing in more restrictive abortion legislation in Republican-governed states in recent years. Cathi Herrod, from the group Center for Arizona Policy, which backed the recent state legislation prohibiting abortion based on genetic anomalies like Down Syndrome, says she hopes that abortion in the United States would not only be illegal but unthinkable."This directly reflects the will of the people as they have elected legislators who want to regulate abortion and want to look out for the lives of pre-born children as well as the lives of their mothers," she says.
Experts believe that the lower courts will strike down several but that some of these legal challenges will end up before the nine members of the Supreme Court. Pro-choice groups fear that the top court could significantly reshape the existing law, if not completely overturned.
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