Joe Biden rallies organizations defending the right to abortion, while some Republican tenors promise on the contrary an all-out ban: the voluntary termination of pregnancy is already a major subject of the campaign for the American presidential election of 2024.
The US President and Vice President Kamala Harris officially accepted, during a public meeting in Washington, the support of the associations Planned Parenthood, NARAL and Emily’s List.
Kamala Harris accused American conservatives of carrying out a “total attack on so many rights and freedoms so dearly acquired” and attacked “extremists” who, according to her, want to ban the right to abortion throughout the United States via federal law.
“The American people will not accept it”, assured the vice-president, who recalled the spectacular about-face, a year ago, of the Supreme Court on abortion, a “very hard blow” according to her .
On June 24, 2022, the high court, deeply overhauled by Donald Trump, overturned its Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed since 1973 the right of American women to have an abortion throughout the territory, giving each state its freedom to legislate.
Since then, the country has been split between the twenty or so states that have decreed bans or strong restrictions, mainly located in the south and center of the country, and those on the coasts that have adopted new guarantees.
Joe Biden denounced Friday the “devastating” consequences of this reversal of the Court, and promised: “We will fight to restore this protection” disappeared from access to abortion at the federal level, by legislative means.
Attacking the right in turn, he assured that the most radical Republicans would attack after the right to abortion, the right to contraception and homosexual marriage: “They will not stop there. “
Almost at the same time, also in the federal capital, a large rally of the evangelical and conservative movement “Faith and Freedom” began, which made the ban on abortion one of its main battles.
Former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, contenders for the Republican nomination for 2024, defended intransigent positions on abortion, the former urging his competitors to support the principle of a federal law that would limit the delays for abortion across the country.
Donald Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech to the rally on Saturday.
The predecessor of Joe Biden, currently considered his most serious rival for 2024, recently considered that the Supreme Court’s decision was “God’s will”.
But, unlike some conservatives, he is not vociferously calling for a federal ban.
Joe Biden, a devout Catholic, has not always been an enthusiastic proponent of abortion rights in the past.
But the 80-year-old Democrat, whose popularity rating remains anemic, has taken on the role of the first defender of the right to abortion with a conviction that does not prevent a certain sense of political expediency.
On Friday, one of its spokespersons recalled on Twitter that according to a recent CBS / YouGov poll, 63% of Americans oppose a ban on abortion throughout the United States.
And the failure of anti-abortion referendums in the very conservative states of Kentucky and Kansas showed shades even in the Republican electorate.
The right to abortion is a subject that crystallizes political divisions in the United States, and which, for many voters, alone decides the ballot they slip into the ballot box.
This is even more true since the Supreme Court decision a year ago.
No less than 28% of Americans registered on the electoral lists declare, for example, according to a Gallup poll published on June 21, that they vote exclusively according to the position of the candidates on the voluntary termination of pregnancy.
They were 27% in a survey conducted in May 2022, which was already a record level, assures the pollster.
23/06/2023 23:56:52 – Washington (AFP) – © 2023 AFP