Irish Examiner view: The hard road back to freedom 

People protest outside the Supreme Court in Washington. The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place for nearly 50 years.

The cries of rage which rang out around the various stages at the Glastonbury Festival this weekend whenever the US abortion judgement was mentioned mark the beginnings of a generational campaign which may take years or decades to bring to a successful conclusion.

Confirmation, long anticipated, that a politically loaded US Supreme Court has formally decided to set the clock back 50 years on women’s rights does not make the decision from what prides itself as the land of the free palatable. In fact, it is worse. Because the detail of the judgement, heavily leaked in advance, marks open season on what might be termed “modern” laws because they do not have specific underpinning in a constitution which is 233 years old.