Supreme Court Repeals Abortion Law, President Biden And Congress Urged To Protect Women's Rights

Protest for the protection of abortion rights in the United States. (Wikimedia Commons/ Charles Edward Miller)

JAKARTA - Women's Democratic Party politicians urged President Joe Biden and the United States Congress to protect national abortion rights, after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, who recognized abortion rights and legalized them nationally, increased political tensions between the federal and state governments.

Two Democratic progressives, Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, urged President Biden to use federal land as a safe haven for abortions, in states that prohibit or severely restrict the practice, after a high court on Friday overturned a decision issued in 1973.

"Forcing women to get pregnant against their will kills them," Ocasio-Cortez said on NBC's Meet the Press program.

Democratic Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams urged Democrats in Congress to draft a Roe v. Wade became law, overriding a US Senate filibuster rule that allowed Republicans to block such an attempt last month.

"We know that the right to vote should not be shared between states, and that the evil practice of taking away your constitutional rights and allowing each state to decide the quality of your citizenship is wrong," Abrams told CNN's State of the Union.

"I would reject the notion that this is the will of the people," he said in a separate interview on Fox News Sunday.

Meanwhile, President Biden condemned the decision as taking "an extreme and dangerous path."

"This is a sad day for the courts and for the nation. The courts have done what has never been done before: decisively usurped a very basic constitutional right for so many Americans," President Biden said.

Furthermore, Democrats are also urging President Biden to defend women's access to pills used for medical abortions, against state efforts to ban their availability, a major new legal battle that his administration has indicated will be waging.

Protest for the protection of abortion rights in the United States. (Wikimedia Commons/Senate Democrats)

Earlier, the Supreme Court on Friday overturned the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade's 1973 recognition of women's constitutional right to abortion, a decision condemned by President Joe Biden that would dramatically change the lives of millions of women in America and exacerbate growing tensions in a highly polarized nation.

The court, in a 6-3 decision backed by a conservative majority, upheld the Republican-backed Mississippi Act that prohibits abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The vote was 5-4 to overturn Roe, with conservative Chief Justice John Roberts writing separately saying he would enforce Mississippi laws without taking additional steps to erase Roe's precedent altogether.

The decision is seen as intensifying debate over the legitimacy of the court, which was once an unshakable foundation of America's democratic system but is increasingly being scrutinized for its more conservative and aggressive decisions on various issues.

The decision restored the state's ability to ban abortion. Twenty-six states believe or think they may prohibit abortion. Mississippi is among 13 states with so-called trigger laws to ban abortions with Roe's annulment.

In a similar vein, raising concerns that judges might overturn other rights, conservative Judge Clarence Thomas urged the court to reconsider previous decisions that protected the right to contraception, legalized gay marriage nationwide, and overturned state laws, which prohibits gay sex.

The judge, in a ruling written by conservative Judge Samuel Alito, said Roe's decision to allow abortions performed before the fetus can live outside the womb, which occurred between 24 and 28 weeks of gestation, was wrong because the US Constitution made no specific mention of abortion rights.

Women with unwanted pregnancies in most of the United States, may now face the choice of traveling to other states where the procedure remains legal and available, buying abortion pills online, or having a potentially dangerous illegal abortion.

Judge Brett Kavanaugh, in concurrence, appeared to reject the idea, advocated by some anti-abortion advocates, that the next step would be for courts to declare that the Constitution prohibits abortion.

"The Constitution does not prohibit abortion or legalize abortion," Kavanaugh wrote.

Kavanaugh also said the ruling does not allow states to prohibit residents from traveling to other states to have abortions, or retroactively penalize people who had previous abortions.