Protect tooth and nail the right to voluntary termination of pregnancy and welcome all women who do not have access to it in their state: California sounded the general mobilization on Tuesday after the revelation of a draft Supreme Court decision returning on this achievement.
“Our daughters, sisters, mothers and grandmothers will not be silenced,” California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom tweeted. “The world is about to hear their fury. California will not stand idly by. We will fight like the devils,” he promised, shortly after the Politico site published the document on Monday evening.
In the process, the governor and the leaders of the parliament of the most populous and wealthy American state announced “an amendment to enshrine the right to choose in the Constitution of our State”.
“We know we cannot trust the Supreme Court to protect reproductive rights, so California will erect a firewall around this right in our Constitution,” they write.
Certainly, this amendment, which should be put to the vote during the mid-term elections next November, will essentially have a symbolic significance, multiple laws already guaranteeing the right to abortion on Californian soil.
But this is precisely the purpose of this announcement: to let all women residing in states that would hasten to restrict or even ban abortion know that California, a Democratic stronghold, will continue to welcome them.
“We will not abandon the women and families affected by the regressive and irresponsible policies of other states,” interim California Senate President Toni Atkins promised at a press conference on Tuesday, committing to this. that “California continues to be a beacon of hope” for them.
– One in four women –
According to the Guttmacher Institute, if the Supreme Court decides in a few weeks to reverse the “Roe v. Wade” judgment of 1973 (according to which the American Constitution guarantees the right of women to have an abortion as long as the fetus is not “viable”), 26 American states would decide “certainly or probably” to ban abortion on their territory.
A study recently published in the American Journal of Public Health concludes that almost one in four women in the United States will have an abortion before they reach the age of 45.
“It’s not going to suddenly stop because extremist politicians will have issued bans, this need will remain!” Thundered Jodi Hicks, president of the organization Planned Parenthood in California, which administers about half of the 165 abortion centers that this state counts.
“It’s about dignity, people’s health and their trajectory into the future,” she insists, referring to the case of destitute and vulnerable young women who will be forced to travel outside their state to have an abortion. .
“We know well that this type of ban disproportionately affects people with low incomes, people of color (…) We also know that people who want an abortion and who are refused it have four times more more likely than others to end up in poverty,” Hicks adds.
Planned Parenthood says it has treated at least 80 out-of-state patients every month in California since last September, when Texas dramatically tightened abortion requirements.
Its Mar Monte branch, which covers northern California and neighboring Nevada, is preparing to take between 250 and 500 additional patients a week if “Roe v. Wade” is broken.
A new abortion center will be opened in Reno, near the airport and other transport hubs, to facilitate the arrival of women from other states, says Planned Parenthood on its website.
California, which had distinguished itself by its fierce opposition to the ultra-conservative policy of former President Donald Trump, had already adopted in 2014 legislation forcing employers and private insurance to include reimbursement for abortions in their health coverage. .