Abortion advocates withdrew an appeal to the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday to prevent Texas from prohibiting abortions during the coronavirus pandemic after a rebound in court. A federal court of appeal decided Monday evening that the authorities of this conservative state could not include medical abortions in the list of "non-emergency operations" prohibited during the crisis.
Effective in terminating a pregnancy in the first few weeks, they consist of taking pills about 30 hours apart, and are not "surgical procedures , " defenders of the right to abortion have argued in court. However, the Texas authorities, followed by several other conservative states, have decided to ban all abortions to reserve hospital beds and protective equipment for Covid-19 patients and their caregivers.
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Applying this decision "to medical abortions although they are apparently not affected seems to indicate that this is a pretext and has no real link with the health crisis , " said judge James Dennis of a New Orleans federal court of appeal. Following this judgment, the fifth in this file, the defenders of the right to abortion on Tuesday withdrew an appeal addressed to the highest jurisdiction of the country become obsolete, even if the surgical abortions remain partly prohibited in Texas. Other federal courts have prevented Alabama or Oklahoma, in particular from suspending the right of women to abort during the health crisis.
This legal battle is the latest in a country that remains very divided almost 50 years after the legalization of abortion by the Supreme Court. If the coastal states guarantee relatively easy access to abortions, the more religious states of the south and center have multiplied the restrictive legislations, pushing many clinics to close their doors.