While the US House of Representatives, controlled since the Midterms of last November by the Republicans, welcomed its new “speaker” Kevin McCarthy barely a week ago, the conservative majority has just adopted two anti-abortion texts on Wednesday 11 January.
A lot has changed since the days when Joe Biden promised that if he won the midterm elections, the first law of Congress would guarantee the right to abortion.
After the painful election of the President of the Chamber, which will have exposed the weaknesses of the party, the Republicans are now displaying their union by the adoption of two highly symbolic resolutions.
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The first, supported by all the Republicans, formally condemns the attacks carried out against the “anti-abortion institutions, associations and churches”. The text specifically targets acts of “violence” intervened from May 2, 2022, the day of the repeal of the Roe v. Wade, which had ensured the right to abortion since 1973. This historic decision by the High Court notably led to the mobilization of democratic parliamentariansand the arrest of 17 of them including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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“Stigmatize abortion”
The second resolution submitted to the vote of elected officials requires the presence of doctors during an abortion which, according to the Republicans, would allow “to provide appropriate care” to try to ” to save “ the aborted fetus. The family planning organization Planned Parenthood strongly criticized the text which “is nothing more than a fear manipulation strategy aimed at stigmatizing abortion”.
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The vast majority of Democrats voted against these measures, their leader Hakeem Jeffries believing that the decision to abort “must be taken only between a woman, her family and her doctors, period”.
However, these two texts have no chance of being adopted. And for good reason, President Joe Biden, who was promised the loss of the Senate in the midterm elections, finally managed to keep the Democratic majority there. The texts should thus be rejected when they pass through the upper house, especially since these resolutions are controversial, including in the opinion of conservative states, in which support for the right to abortion remains strong.
