The Senate of the fourth most populous state in the country and with a Democratic majority “has adopted an amendment to codify in the Constitution the rights to abortion and contraception”, according to a press release from this assembly which sits in the capital of State, in Albany.
This text, which will still have to be voted on by the other chamber of the local Congress, the Assembly, then be adopted by a popular referendum before coming into force at the earliest in 2024, also provides for the protection of rights related to “gender , disability, sexual orientation, nationality, community or age”.
Engraving the right to abortion in stone in American state constitutions had begun before the shock decision of the Supreme Court on June 24 which ended the federal legal guarantee of abortion throughout the country.
A dozen “progressive” states that claim to be abortion “sanctuaries”, particularly in the northeastern and western United States — Vermont, Maryland, California, Washington — have already done or about to do so.
“The reversal of Roe v. Wade is clear evidence that New York State must continue to be at the forefront of the nation in protecting women and individual rights,” said the Democratic Majority Leader. in the New York Senate, cited in the press release.
The Roe v. Wade, who had established the right to abortion throughout the United States since 1973, was overturned by a now resolutely conservative Supreme Court, after the appointments of conservative judges decided by former President Donald Trump.
It is now up to the 50 states to decide on abortion. Half of them according to the Guttmacher Institute – especially in the south and the center Republicans, conservatives and religious – have already banned it or are considering doing so.
