For generations, US liberals relied on the Roe v Wade ruling to support sex-based rights. Last week’s reversal shows how misguided they were
To mark the supreme court judgment that guaranteed American women a right to abortion in 1973, the feminist magazine Ms. published a graphic photo of a dead 27-year-old woman kneeling over, surrounded by bloody towels. Her name was Gerri Santoro and she died alone in a motel room during a botched abortion in 1964, a mother to two young daughters who had left her violently abusive husband.
That is the image the United States will today again have to confront as a result of the anticipated decision of the supreme court to overturn that federal guarantor of abortion rights, Roe v Wade. It leaves abortion rights to the states, meaning abortion is now illegal or soon-to-be illegal in 22 states in all or most circumstances, including, in some states, in cases of rape. It comes in the wake of already reduced access to abortion in many of those states as a result of practical restrictions on the operation of abortion clinics. It is a dramatic rollback of women’s rights in one of the world’s richest countries, which prides itself on its protection of individual liberties.
