Photo: Frederic J. Brown Agence France-Presse “Donald Trump is the architect of this health care crisis. And it’s not a fact he hides. In fact, he brags about it,” US Vice President Kamala Harris said during a trip to Arizona.
Paula Ramon – Agence France-Presse to Tucson
April 12, 2024
- United States
When it comes to abortion, Donald Trump “wants to take America back to the 1800s”, tackled Kamala Harris on Friday during a trip to Arizona, where the courts have just ruled that a quasi-ban is applicable. -total of voluntary termination of pregnancy (IVG), 160 years old.
“This is what a second Trump term looks like: more bans, more suffering and less freedom,” said the American vice-president. “Like he did in Arizona, he wants to take America back to the 1800s.”
A few months before the November presidential election, abortion is emerging as a major campaign issue in the United States and particularly in this key southwestern state, where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump with only 10,000 votes ahead in 2020.
Because the Arizona Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled applicable an 1864 law, which prohibits abortion from conception, except in cases where the mother is in mortal danger.
Rape and incest are not considered valid exceptions. This text dating back to the Civil War, a time when women did not have the right to vote, is controversial and embarrassing even in Republican ranks.
Its actual application remains very uncertain, particularly because the Arizona Attorney General has sworn not to prosecute any doctor or woman involved in an abortion.
But the threat of a major tightening exists. Ms. Harris portrayed the decision as “one of the greatest aftershocks” of the earthquake of 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down constitutional protection of the right to abortion.
This reversal, decided by conservative judges, some appointed by Donald Trump, was “only the first act of a broader strategy aimed at suppressing the rights and freedoms of women […], State by State”, denounced the Democratic vice-president.
“Donald Trump is the architect of this health care crisis,” she continued. “And that’s not a fact he’s hiding. In fact, he brags about it. »
Electoral ball
Arizona is one of a handful of key states that will decide the presidential election. The Democrats are making abortion a strong argument in favor of the re-election of Joe Biden, so far left behind by Donald Trump in the polls.
A vast advertising campaign worth at least one million dollars must target this southwestern state to present the Democratic president as an ardent defender of abortion.
Over the past two years, around twenty American states have banned or severely restricted access to abortion.
But this ideological victory turned into an electoral burden for the Republicans. Polls show that the majority of Americans support abortion, which weakens the Conservative Party at the polls.
Even voters in Kansas, a state anchored to the right, recently supported the right to abortion in a referendum.
To (re)read
- Editorial | Right to abortion: Kansas has spoken
- Right to abortion: will conservative states follow the path of Kansas ?
Aware of the political risk, Donald Trump is now exercising restraint, recalling that each state is free to legislate on the subject.
“The Arizona Supreme Court went too far in its decision on abortion,” he repeated Friday on his network Truth Social.
The Republican-dominated Arizona Legislature must “move as quickly as possible” to pass a new law, he said. “We should ideally have the three exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother. It is important ! »
In his post, he portrayed Democrats as “extremists,” repeating a lie that the American left supports “the execution of babies, in some cases after birth.”< /p>
In Tucson, Ms. Harris referred him to his de facto alliance with evangelical voters, supporters of a total ban on abortion, and to the vagueness he has long maintained on the issue.
“Donald Trump’s friends in the US Congress are trying to push through a national ban,” she recalled. “And now Trump wants us to believe he won’t sign a nationwide ban ? Enough of this manipulation! »
Sterilizations jump in the United States
The United States has seen a meteoric rise in the number of sterilizations as a means of contraception since the constitutional guarantee of the right to abortion was struck down at the federal level two years ago, according to a published study Friday.
The study highlights that the sterilization rate had certainly already increased in the years preceding this historic decision, with 2.8 procedures per 100,000 women per month and 1 per 100,000 men.< /p>
But the decision triggered a spectacular jump with 58 sterilization procedures per 100,000 women per month and 27 per 100,000 men, according to the study which focuses on 18-30 year olds.
After the initial shock of the reversal of jurisprudence, the number of vasectomies among men returned to previous trends, while the rate of tubal ligations among women continued to increase more rapidly than before the decision of the Supreme Court, note the researchers.
This notable difference “probably reflects the fact that young women bear largely the responsibility for preventing pregnancies,” said the study's lead author, Jacqueline Ellison of the University of Pittsburgh.
“And they disproportionately suffer the health, social and economic consequences of abortion bans,” she added in a press release.
However, sterilization procedures are much more complex and two to six times more expensive for women than for men, the authors of the study specify in the press release.
In addition, reversing female sterilization requires complex and invasive surgery, which is much less the case for men.
Agence France-Presse, in Washington