The subject of abortion continues to divide in the United States. The Republican governor of Oklahoma, in the south of the country, announced that he had signed a law on Tuesday banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. This makes it one of the most restrictive texts in the country, while the Supreme Court is preparing to reverse this right at the federal level.
“I represent all four million Oklahoma residents who overwhelmingly want to protect unborn children,” Kevin Stitt wrote on Twitter as he signed into law the text voted by the state legislature last Thursday. “I want Oklahoma to become the most pro-life state in the country,” he further declared, using the expression consecrated by Americans opposed to abortion. The text provides for medical exceptions for access to abortion, but not in the event of rape or incest.
The bomb from the Supreme Court
This conservative state had been welcoming thousands of Texan women seeking abortions for several months, after the passage of a similar text in this neighboring state. Since September 2021 already, Texas has in fact put in place a law prohibiting any abortion from the moment when a heartbeat of the embryo is perceptible on ultrasound, that is to say approximately four weeks after fertilization.
The legality of similar texts in other states has been studied by the Supreme Court for several months. But, on Monday evening, the publication by the newspaper Politico of a draft decision of the Supreme Court on this subject indicates that the federal institution would be on the point of returning to the States the power to authorize, or not, abortions, nearly 50 years after having made them legal in all the country. The leak of this document, the authenticity of which was confirmed by the Court, which recalled that it was not the final decision, had the effect of a bombshell in Washington and pushed Democratic President Joe Biden to recall its support for the right to abortion.