Women’s rights hang in a Supreme balance

Leading US women’s groups including NOW and NARAL now fear for women’s fundamental rights as the double vacancy on the US Supreme Court provides Bush with an unprecedented opportunity to further his extremist anti-choice agenda. New nominations that change the balance in the court on a series of key social rights questions could threaten the groundbreaking 1973 Roe v Wade judgement that legalised abortion in the USA.

Already this year, US women have faced an unparalleled wave of anti-choice legal restrictions at state-level and the Supreme Court is due to hear significant cases on abortion in the new term starting on October 3rd. If legal protection of the right to choose at a federal level were lost, only a small proportion of states would be likely to allow women access to safe, legal abortion. The impact on US women’s health, employment, education, and equality would be catastrophic and the shock waves would be felt across the world – including in Britain.

In the US, however, a massive coalition of groups representing millions of Americans has been established to block anti-choice nominees and Bush’s record unpopularity could limit his political space to nominate an anti-choice hawk to fill the second vacancy.

An estimated 80,000 women die every year from unsafe abortion. We simply cannot afford for the clock to be turned back.

More information is available on the NARAL and NOW websites:

NARAL Press Release

NOW Press Release