Overturning Roe Vs Wade ‘will impact’ NI abortion law; Amazon, Yelp and Citigroup plan to help employees circumvent changes

Both Lives Matter spokeswoman Dawn McAvoy was speaking after a US Supreme Court leak suggested the iconic legal case could be overturned this summer. Roe Vs Wade was a 1973 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that the US Constitution protects a pregnant woman’s right to have an abortion in US every state.

But a leaked Supreme Court decision suggests the court is poised to rule that the 1973 decision was “egregiously wrong” and that the issue of abortion should now be returned “to the people’s elected representatives” at state level. This would pave the way for individual states to decide whether to ban abortion and how to regulate it - a return to the position before the 1973 ruling.

Ms McAvoy said the expected change in the US law would have a major impact in abortion legislation in Northern Ireland - and the rest of the world.

“It will [impact NI] in the sense of an ideological challenge to the dogma created by Roe that falsely and wrongly determined that abortion was a) a constitutional right and b) was found within a right to privacy - ‘my body my choice’.”

That ideology was then absorbed and embedded in women’s rights across the world, she said.

“And that connected language of privacy and rights then became normalised and accepted and quoted in international laws too. If Roe is overturned other legal challenges seem inevitable. The final ruling and the basis for that will I’m sure prove important.”

However she added that she finds the “irrational hysteria” surrounding the leak “astonishing”.

She added: “Abortion will be returned to the realm and responsibility of the state legislators to democratically decide based on that state’s beliefs, values and morals. Some states will have unlimited abortion. Others will restrict it.”

She claimed the “pro-abortion ideologues” whose commitment to abortion is “nearly cultish in its zealotry” have now shown that ever easier access to abortion - rather than reducing the need for abortion - has, “like a drug, just created a cultural and social addiction”.

The outworking of this in social policy, she claims, “fails the most vulnerable and marginalised above all”.

She added: “The addiction isn’t necessarily the woman’s, it may be the apathetic or abusive partner, the social structure, the governmental body that sees cheap and easy abortion as a quick fix, a means of control, an efficient and economical solution.”

In response to the expected ruling, several major US employers are offering to cover the expenses of anyone who chooses to travel out of their state for an abortion.

A message to Amazon staff this week said that the firm will pay up to $4,000 (£3,201) in travel expenses each year for treatments not available nearby, including abortion. The news came on the day Amazon stopped offering paid time off for US employees diagnosed with COVID-19, letting them have five days of excused unpaid leave instead.

US companies including Yelp and Citigroup have also recently said they will reimburse employees who travel to circumvent local abortion restrictions. Citigroup said the policy was “in response to changes in reproductive healthcare laws in certain states”.

The News Letter also invited pro-choice groups and parties such as Amnesty International, the Green Party and Sinn Fein to comment on the Roe Vs Wade developments.