According to recent polls, Americans overwhelmingly support Roe v Wade, the 1973 US supreme court ruling that protects a woman’s right to an abortion. But two new legal challenges to that decision could jeopardise the ability of American women to access abortions – and have knock-on effects for reproductive rights across the globe.
Guardian US health reporter Jessica Glenza has been reporting on laws that severely restrict abortion access in Mississippi and Texas; she tells Nosheen Iqbal that this is a ‘perilous moment’ for reproductive rights in the US.
The Mississippi law, known as the Gestational Age Act, bans most abortions after 15 weeks. If the supreme court deems that law constitutional, it would essentially overturn Roe v Wade. The Texas law, SB8, in effect bans abortion at six weeks, while also empowering citizens to sue providers and anyone who helps a woman access an abortion. In Texas, Amy Hagstrom Miller, the founder and CEO of Whole Women’s Health, a network of abortion clinics across the state, explains how the law has already emboldened anti-abortion activists.
Photograph: Allison Bailey/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock
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