“Judges are not doctors”, “Abortion must remain legal!” Several hundred people demonstrated this Saturday in Washington for the right to abortion. United States. The United States is embroiled in a complex legal battle over the abortion pill. Its access was finally temporarily maintained by the Supreme Court on Friday but remains, in the long term, threatened.
“When does it stop?” lamented one protester, Carol Bouchard, in front of the white marble building that houses the American Temple of Law. Sign in hand, the 61-year-old former lawyer says she is “very angry” to see access to the abortion pill threatened nearly a year after the Supreme Court struck down the country’s constitutional protection to abortion. This decision had led to the ban on abortion in fifteen states.
On this sunny afternoon, Brittany House, a resident of Washington, takes the stage and talks about the abortion she had in 2012, when she was just out of university. “Aborting made me free”, says the young woman, assuring that at 21 years old, she “would not have been able to take care of this child”.
Many septuagenarians are also marching in front of the Supreme Court, outraged to see the restrictions being linked in the country, fifty years after having fought for the right to abortion. Abortion “saved my life,” says Barbara Kraft, who had an abortion in the late 1970s due to serious complications during her pregnancy. “I really believe that women should have the right to make that decision themselves. Illustrating the tensions that run through American society, the rally was briefly interrupted by a small group of anti-abortion protesters proclaiming, through megaphones, that “abortions are murder”. This Saturday, pro-abortion demonstrations were also organized in Los Angeles and New York.