The Portuguese association UMAR — União de Mulheres Alternativa e Response warned this Saturday of the “setbacks in abortion laws around the world”considering it “the reflection of an increasingly polarized political landscape.”
In a statement sent to the newsrooms, after the anti-abortion decision made on Friday by the Supreme Court of the United States, the UMAR considered that “Conservatism and nationalism have been gaining more and more strength and influence in political decisions that affect women’s lives.”
“Attacks on our freedom and autonomy demonstrate the way states control our bodies and our lives. Every setback in women’s rights is an alarm and a danger for what will come next. Therefore, we have to be vigilant and continue fighting”, warned the association founded in 1976.
The association highlighted Amnesty International figures according to which 47,000 women die annually worldwide from complications caused by clandestine abortions.
“Umar, who fought alongside other citizen associations and movements for almost three decades for a law that would allow women to interrupt their pregnancy in public health services, a right that was achieved 15 years ago, wants to express his profound solidarity with women, who continue to suffer in various regions of the world and are denied the right to decide on their lives, warning of the dangers of these setbacks also in Portugal”, the association said.
In addition to the United States, where “The Supreme Court annulled a fundamental right of American women conquered in 1973, which guaranteed abortion at the request of the woman”, the UMAR also pointed out the case of Brazil where, “recently, the process that culminated in the interruption of the pregnancy of an 11-year-old girl, a victim of sexual abuse, began. constituted a true torture against a child, by the Brazilian justice system, which denied the right to this procedure for a month, during which the girl was institutionalized and away from her mother.”
“The conduct of the magistrate and the judge who pressured the girl to maintain the pregnancy reflects the partiality, impunity and violence of the institutions against women and girls in the country. In Brazil, abortion is the biggest public health problem, with thousands of women having clandestine abortions every year.
The decision of the US Supreme Court was approved with the support of six of the nine justices of the US highest court and upholds a Mississippi state law that restricts abortion after 15 weeks of gestation .
However, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, in which the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, no longer figured, decided to go further and revoke the precedents established in the past by the same court that protected that right.
With Friday’s ruling, states that do so will be able to ban abortion entirely, a practice already illegal in nine states.
Source: Observadora
