Drakeford slams US Supreme Court decision to end abortion rights as ‘heartbreaking and dangerous’
The First Minister has slammed the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn abortion rights as “heartbreaking and dangerous”.
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn its 50-year-old Roe v Wade decision this afternoon will see millions of women in the US will lose the constitutional right to abortion.
Thirteen US states have already passed ‘ trigger laws’ to automatically outlaw abortion, and more are expected to follow.
In a statement, Mark Drakeford said: “This is a heartbreaking and dangerous verdict for the basic human rights of women across the US.
“A women’s right to choose is not a political tool. Progress is never inevitable, we must all stand together to support the rights of women everywhere.”
Boris Johnson also condemned the decision to scrap the constitutional right to abortion in the United States as a “big step backwards”.
The Prime Minister told reporters at a press conference in Kigali, Rwanda, that “I’ve always believed in a woman’s right to choose.”
‘Fundamental’
More than 100 demonstrators gathered outside the United States embassy in London, many holding signs, some reading “our bodies, our choice”.
Pro-choice campaigners and MSPs also gathered outside the US consulate in Edinburgh.
Scotland’s First Minister called it “one of the darkest days for women’s rights in my lifetime”.
“Obviously the immediate consequences will be suffered by women in the US – but this will embolden anti-abortion & anti-women forces in other countries too. Solidarity doesn’t feel enough right now – but it is necessary.”
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer tweeted: “Today’s devastating Supreme Court decision is a massive setback for women’s rights in the United States of America.
“The right of women to make their own decisions about their own bodies is a fundamental human right.”
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Wind your neck in, carrot!
Fear is won’t end here…will no doubt eventually impact birth control, same sex marriage, LBGTQ rights.
Organised, often wealthy and connected minorities (a minority in number not used to comment on ethnicity) are targeting the flaws in democracies to try and make their country more like Orban’s Hungary, to wind the clock back under some “strongman” image and make the countries more like the wild west. Of course there is concern about what the next thing to fall will be or how this has set a precedent in America for dirty politics. The only thing to take from this is each individual can make things better or worse, but it can take time and needs organisation… Read more »
WOW!! God bless ‘merica, land of the free, just as long as you’re not female, amazing how quickly the yanks want to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Taliban, how soon before we see gay men being thrown off buildings?
Wow, what a ridiculous conflation of traditional western values with Islamic extremism. Nice one, skid!
Yeap, the likes of the Taliban, Iran, Putin etc are loving this. God help us all if Trump gets back in
I agree with what Drakeford is saying, but I hate the title to the article. Can news orgs please stop with all the slammings and blastings and actually write out an informative title?
But now, U.S. childless couples may be able to provide a loving home for an unwanted American kid, instead of trawling the third world.
Its was truly disturbing to see so many women celebrating their fundamental rights being taken away from then. I get that pro-lifers have very strong views in regards to abortion, but what they should not do is impose their views on other people. States like Arkansas implementing a zero tolerance policy on abortion, ie even if the pregnancy endangers the mothers life, or even if the girl has been raped. If this isn’t inhumane then I don’t know what it.
I am guessing that anti-abortion activists would respond to your comment by saying that unborn babies have some value too, and that abortion is currently being used as a form of contraception. In cases of rape, I don’t see how an abortion could ever rightly be denied, and perhaps there is an argument for limiting births of deformed fetuses/children. However, there is the wider impact that abortion has upon society – anti-abortion activists argue that women’s sexual freedom is being prioritised over other matters of great importance, and that the social experiment conducted since the 1960s has swung too far… Read more »
If abortion is currently being used as a form of contraception then society is delivering substandard sex education. Also “sexual freedom” doesn’t just apply to women for some men it means them not taking responsibility for contraception. Seeing both sides may be a virtue. As applied, rather than no abortions should take place (accepting your caveats) or abortions could take place at any time the seeing both sides virtue would likely manifest itself as imposing a limit on how late a foetus could be aborted. Which is basically the seeing both sides of it ruling that the Supreme court of… Read more »
Cleary, America has sub-standard sex education, and insufficient promotion of condom usage. Agreed. I had to read through your response twice in order to garner its meaning, but I hear what you’re saying – which is, I think, that the standard until now was itself a compromise, or ‘seeing both sides’; some sexual freedom including the use of abortions as contraception, together with some limitation on the lateness of abortions into the pregnancy. I am guessing through that the SCOTUS made its ruling based partly on the evidence of abortion’s impact upon society through recent decades. Not least among very… Read more »
SCOTUS made it’s decision primarily in order to please Republican voting Christian fundamentalists. Looking at the aims of US Antiabortion groups a significant number are also explicitly anti-contraception while most are anti sex health education in schools. The idea that abortion is a routine form of contraception is a myth pushed by the anti abortion lobby and even if it were true the most effective way of addressing it would be to promote sex health education in schools and the availability of contraceptive advice. However the anti abortion movement is to a very large extent against such education and advice.… Read more »
Agree on most of the above. Other than the fact that abortion is used far too readily as a way of ridding something living from the body of a woman who forgot to use contraception.
As I said, though, in cases of someone being raped, the idea that someone cannot then abort is outrageous.
“…ridding something living from the body of a woman who forgot to use contraception”
Sounds like (along with other things you’ve written) that you see women as they were often seen by men a century ago.
Thank you.
Why doesn’t Drakeford keep his nose out. .Lunatics of the left have no place pushing their unwanted views on ANYBODY . .