United States: Donald Trump takes anti-abortion measures

Donald Trump took a series of measures against abortion on Friday and sent a message of support to the tens of thousands of anti-abortion demonstrators who marched during the day in Washington, five days after the Republican’s inauguration.

The US president repealed two executive orders issued by his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden in 2022, when the US Supreme Court reversed federal protection of the right to abortion, which aimed to protect certain access to women’s reproductive health .

His head of diplomacy, at the same time, ordered the cessation of all American public subsidies in favor of abortion abroad and decided to join an international declaration opposing the right to abortion initiated during the first term of Donald Trump.

“We will again proudly fight for families and lives”

These decisions by the new Republican administration come on the day of the 52nd edition of the “March for Life”, the annual parade of the anti-abortion movement in the United States which Donald Trump supported on Friday with a video message.

“During my second term, we will once again proudly fight for families and lives,” he promised the demonstrators. “We will protect the historic gains that we have obtained.” “Praise God for President Trump,” David Makovey, who came from California especially for the occasion, told AFP in the crowd of the procession.

At least a hundred members of the American white supremacist and neo-Nazi group “Patriot Front” joined the rally, without however having the support of the organizers.

“I can’t stand seeing them here”

Military approach, brandishing American flags, religious images and banners, claiming that “strong families make strong nations”, they marched in columns on the sidelines of the main demonstration.

A presence not to the taste of certain demonstrators. “Pro-life is not pro-white,” said Greg Stearns, a 36-year-old philosophy professor from North Carolina. “I can’t stand seeing them here. It sends the wrong message.”

In the procession which marched from the White House to the Supreme Court and the Capitol, seat of the American Congress, signs “Let us love the little beings”, “We do not play with God”, or even “Life is our revolution. Also a few hats from the Trumpist “Make America Great Again” movement, but most of the participants did not display any sign of political affiliation.

“Make abortion inconceivable”

JD Vance, the American vice president, and Mike Johnson, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, also spoke to the activists.

The organizers of this march explain that their goal is not only to change laws, federal and state, “but also to change the culture to ultimately make abortion inconceivable.”

This demonstration comes the day after the pardon granted by the new Republican president to 23 people who had participated in demonstrations against the voluntary termination of pregnancy and were prosecuted under the previous administration of Democrat Joe Biden.

Three conservative judges appointed to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump

The “pro-life” movement, as its activists call themselves, recorded a historic victory in June 2022, when the American Supreme Court overturned the “Roe v Wade” decision and thus the federal guarantee of the right to abortion. Donald Trump, who during his first term appointed three conservative judges to the Supreme Court, often congratulates himself on having contributed to this.

Following this reversal in jurisprudence, many conservative states have banned or very severely limited the use of abortion. Today, nearly one in three American women between the ages of 18 and 44 lives in one of these states, according to the Politifact website.

Joe Biden’s two decrees repealed on Friday by Donald Trump notably protected women’s personal health data and certain access to means of contraception.

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