US backsliding on women's rights underscores systemic flaws

TRAGIC IMPACT

Without Roe v. Wade, states are allowed to impose their own legislation on the medical procedure. More than a dozen states, whose legislatures are controlled by Republicans, have enacted restrictive abortion laws or will have such legislation take effect in the coming weeks.

Kaylee White, attending school in West Virginia, is considering transferring to a different state where abortion is not criminalized.

"I don't feel protected in my state, my rights, especially. I don't want to contribute to that," she told Xinhua at the Franklin Square rally.

Three days after the Supreme Court issued the ruling, Caitlan Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist from the city of Indianapolis, received a call from "a child abuse doctor" in Ohio who had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant, according to the Indianapolis Star.

Unable to obtain an abortion in Ohio, where any procedure after six weeks is banned, the girl "was on her way to Indiana to Bernard's care," the Star wrote. Abortion is still legal in Indiana, but the conservative stronghold is poised to pass the state's own abortion law.

The story has gone viral across social media and caused outrage. "It is appalling that you would force a 10-year-old child -- who was violated -- to carry another child," Torres responded. "Her body is not fully developed, and yet you're going to force her to have a child. What world are we in?"

The American Civil Liberties Union's branch in Ohio tweeted patients and victims in the state "are suffering in real time" and that "the six-week abortion ban is causing long-term, devastating harm to our communities. This is absolutely tragic."

On Friday, Biden also weighed in on the case before signing an executive order on access to reproductive health care services. "Ten years old. Ten years old. Raped, six weeks pregnant. Already traumatized. Was forced to travel to another state. Imagine being that little girl," Biden said from the White House.

Members of the European Parliament voted to adopt a resolution on Thursday, condemning "once more the backsliding in women's rights and sexual and reproductive health and rights" in the United States and some European Union member states.

"The US Supreme Court decision to overturn the right to abortion is a devastating development and an attack on women's fundamental rights everywhere," said Swedish politician Helene Fritzon, a European Parliament member and vice-chair of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats. "It teaches us a lesson: women's and girls' human rights can never be taken for granted and we must always fight to defend them."