Irish Examiner View: Anniversary of abortion judgment highlights the need for progress

The tactics of anti-abortion groups in the US will find an echo here and scrutiny must be maintained if long-desired liberalisation is to be protected and implemented

Protesters march to the White House to denounce the US Supreme Court decision to end federal abortion rights protections on June 26, 2022.  Picture: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

It was a year ago this weekend that the US Supreme Court delivered a judgment in the case of Dobbs versus Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

Dobbs was Thomas E Dobbs, the health officer for Mississippi. Jackson WHO was a clinic offering abortion pills and on-site treatment.

The ruling became notorious because it overturned the five-decade precedent of Roe v Wade, leaving it up to politicians in 50 states to determine abortion rights in their jurisdictions. 

We warned then that there would be two Americas: One that would protect women’s health and freedoms, and one where women would have much-reduced or no reproductive rights.

The year has proven to be even more confusing, dispiriting, and grisly. Half the states are expected to try to prohibit abortion or put in place gestational limits. Fourteen total bans are in place (except in cases of rape or incest). 

Time-limited interventions range from just six weeks (in Georgia) to 15, 18, 20, or 22, with guidance depending on whether a foetus is clinically judged to be ‘viable’. 

A confusing network of rules girds the nation. Some states have enacted laws — the ‘shield rules’ — to protect service providers and medical staff within their boundaries from being sued in neighbouring courts.

Over half (58%) of all women of reproductive age, or around 40m US citizens, will live in states that are hostile to termination. And hostile is the appropriate word. This week, the New Yorker   reported on the Red River Women’s Clinic, the only provider of abortion services in North Dakota, a beautiful state with a high quality of life. But the attorney general has introduced a ban in nearly all cases.

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Offices in Fargo have relocated to the neighbouring city of Moorhead, 10 minutes away in the state of Minnesota. 

The clinic’s medical director does not do interviews with the press, drives eight hours, round trip, to provide treatment and care, and enters and leaves the building wearing a bulletproof vest. The new clinic has its own parking lot and hectoring protesters have to stay at least 100ft away from patients.

When Roe v Wade was overturned last June, it marked the beginning of a generational campaign that may take years or decades to conclude. The Democratic Party made protecting abortion rights a fundamental policy of November’s midterm elections and did better than anticipated. Republicans, who campaigned for abortion restrictions, did worse.

Campaigners had only succeeded in replacing the Eighth Amendment in 2018 and pandemic restrictions delayed full implementation of reforms. Picture: Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews.ie

The change of direction across the Atlantic was greeted with shock in Ireland, where campaigners had only succeeded in replacing the Eighth Amendment in September 2018 and where the pandemic restrictions delayed full implementation of reforms. 

Even so, the latest figures show a significant increase in the number of abortions in the Republic, with 8,156 in 2022, compared to 4,577 in 2021 and 6,600 in the previous two years. 

The counties with the highest number of terminations were Dublin (3,005), Cork (734), and Limerick (377). The county with the fewest was Leitrim, with only 48.

The tactics of anti-abortion groups in the US will find an echo here. Scrutiny must be maintained if long-desired liberalisation is to be protected and implemented.