The first dispute on the termination of pregnancies that could call into question the right to abortion in the United States, sanctioned in 1973 with the historic sentence “Roe vs Wade”, reaches the American Supreme Court. The top US judicial body, for the first time since boasting an overwhelming majority of conservative judges (6 to 3), will have to assess the constitutionality of the Mississippi law that bans virtually all abortion after the 15th week.
The latest appeal to the Supreme Court in favor of a similar law in Louisiana was rejected by a whisker (5 to 4) thanks to the vote against of the chief judge John Roberts who joined the liberals led by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who disappeared on the 18th September last year and replaced by the conservative, fervent Catholic, Amy Coney Barrett, nominated by Donald Trump.
The right to abortion enshrined in the 1973 “Roe v. Wade” was reaffirmed 19 years later by the Supreme Court with the verdict on the Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey case. According to the Guttmacher Institute, abortions have progressively decreased since the 1980s in the United States, reaching a record low in recent times.