Photo: Kevin Dietsch / Getty Images
For: EFE Updated 14 Apr 2022, 24: 40 pm EDT
WaASHINGTON- The White House called this Thursday “radical” the recently enacted law in Florida that prohibits abortion in that state after 14 weeks of pregnancy, including in cases of rape or incest, and insisted that legislation must be passed at the national level.
The deputy spokeswoman for the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre, regretted that the governor of the southern state, Ron Desantis, has signed this measure that will come into force on July 1, and that it contradicts the precedent established by the Supreme Court on abortion in the country.
“The president asks Congress to act and send him a bill that ends with these radical steps that (conservative states) are taking,” Jean-Pierre told reporters aboard Air Force One presidential plane.
In theIn the last decade, several conservative states have passed hundreds of measures to restrict the right to abortion, in a campaign whose explicit goal was to get the Supreme Court to review and strike down “Roe versus Wade”, the decision that legalized abortion in the United States in 1973.
The tall The court, with a conservative majority, plans to decide in the middle of this year on an abortion-related case, and everything indicates that it will erode or annul the precedent established in 1973, which would allow each territory of the country to prohibit or allow the interruption of pregnancy at will.
If that happens, it is expected that about half of the states of the country take measures to veto abortion, according to the pro-reproductive rights organization Guttmacher.
Far from waiting for that decision from the Supreme Court, the Texas authorities have already imposed last year a veto from six weeks that is still in force despite violating the provisions of “Roe versus Wade”, which legalized abortion throughout the country until 24 gestation weeks.
Oklahoma passed another even more restrictive piece of legislation this week, a law banning abortion in all cases except where the mother’s life is at risk; while Kentucky became this Thursday the first state where it is not possible to perform any abortion due to a similar measure.
In Florida, the new law reduces from 24 to 15 weeks the period in which a pregnant woman can legally terminate her pregnancy and only contemplates two exceptions: that the life of the mother is in danger and that the fetus has malformations.
For the White House and other groups, the solution lies in the approval of a law that guarantees the right to abortion at the national level, but the majority of activists recognize that there are not enough votes in the Senate to carry out this measure.
Approve this legislation, known as Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), allows It would shield the right to abortion throughout the country even if the Supreme Court repeals “Roe versus Wade.”
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