Demonstrators make their views heard at a rally in Los Angeles on Saturday, the second day of protests over a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to remove federal legal protection for abortions. (PHOTO/XINHUA)

Many fear reversal of court decision just the start of conservative offensive in U.S.

Tens of thousands of demonstrators marched in cities across the United States on Saturday in a second day of protests over a decision by the Supreme Court to remove federal legal protection for abortions.

The protests were largely peaceful after the nation's highest court voted 5-4 on Friday to overturn the five-decade-old Roe vs Wade ruling that provided women with a federal constitutional right to an abortion. But the passions driving the protests are unlikely to abate, especially in a year with crucial elections for Congress.

The ruling came more than a month after the leak of a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito indicating the court was prepared to overturn Roe vs Wade.

"The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision," Alito wrote.

Authority to regulate abortion rests with the political branches of government, not the courts, he wrote.

The immediate impact of the court's ruling is that women with unwanted pregnancies in large swathes of the U.S. now may face the choice of traveling to another state where the procedure remains legal and available, buying abortion pills online or having a potentially dangerous illegal abortion.

An already polarized country could face even greater social divisions as some states allow abortions and others have acted to ban them. And in a concurring opinion that raised concerns the justices might roll back other rights, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas urged the court to reconsider past rulings protecting the right to contraception.

Divided country

Mei Gechlik, founder and chief executive of the Sinotalks website, told China Daily: "The drastically different responses to the overturning of the decision reflect how divided the United States is."

Gechlik, founder and former director of the China Guiding Cases Project at Stanford Law School, added: "It will take a lot of political wisdom to mend these differences. However, a big question is: Where is this wisdom?"

Lindsay Cui, a financial adviser in Silicon Valley, California, told China Daily that after the court's decision was announced, "I rushed out of the house, and walked one and a half hours to calm down. My immediate reaction to the ruling was very angry and heartbroken that our country is going backward."

The 55-year-old executive said: "I'm angry that six conservative Supreme Court justices took away 50 years of a woman's right to choose her own sensitive reproductive health decision. This is discriminatory toward poor women and people of color. It will increase the cycle of poverty within our country, especially within red (Republican-controlled) states.

"Guns have more rights than women in America. I hope for blue waves of voters that will change the direction of this country," added Cui, referring to the color associated with the Democratic Party.

A commentary published by The New Yorker magazine said those who argue that this decision will not actually change things much－an instinct people will find on both sides of the political divide－are blind to the ways in which state-level anti-abortion crusades have already turned pregnancy into punishment, and the ways in which the situation is poised to become much worse.

The Supreme Court's ruling restored the ability of states to ban abortion. Several states are expected to ban abortions immediately or as soon as practicable. Twenty-six states are either certain or considered likely to ban abortion.

Thirteen states have abortion bans triggered by a reversal of the Roe vs Wade ruling, though the laws vary in their enforcement dates. This will make abortion illegal across most of the South and the Midwest.

Since the decision was announced, clinics have stopped performing abortions in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Women considering abortions had already been dealing with a near-complete ban in Oklahoma and a prohibition after roughly six weeks in Texas.

Anti-abortion laws aren't national. The U.S. will have a patchwork of laws, including restrictions and protections, because some Democratic-led states such as California and New York expanded reproductive rights in the run-up to the court's decision.

The court's ruling leaves questions over how much of a role the issue could play in the midterm elections for Congress in November. Republicans are expected to win control of the House of Representatives and perhaps the Senate.

With state legislatures and governors now in the position of protecting or rescinding abortion access, both main political parties are now expected to focus on the issue. Thousands of legislative seats and governors' offices in 36 states will be up for election.

Despite the street protests against the court ruling, many Republicans said they will not stop with last week's decision and will push to ban abortion nationwide.

Republicans and activists opposed to abortion said they plan to force those states that allow it to ban the procedure either through state-by-state campaigns or a federal law banning it.

"Having been given this second chance for life, we must not rest and must not relent until the sanctity of life is restored to the center of American law in every state in the land," former vice-president Mike Pence said in a statement.

Former president Donald Trump told Fox News in an interview aired after the decision that the court was "following the Constitution, and giving rights back when they should have been given long ago". He added: "I think, in the end, this is something that will work out for everybody."

Asked whether he deserved some credit for the ruling, Trump said: "God made the decision."

He later issued a statement praising himself for appointing three conservatives to the court who voted to overturn Roe vs Wade.

A survey conducted last month for the CNN network found that 66 percent of those questioned said they believed the ruling should not be overturned.

A Gallup survey this month found that the share of people identifying as "pro-choice" had jumped to 55 percent after hovering between 45 percent and 50 percent for a decade. That sentiment was "the highest Gallup has measured since 1995", while the 39 percent who identified as "pro-life" was "the lowest since 1996", the polling firm said.

Many pollsters say it is too soon to tell how the issue will play out in the midterm congressional elections.

Democrats are battling the highest inflation in four decades, including high gas prices, and low poll ratings for U.S. President Joe Biden.

"This ruling does nothing to change the fact that voters' top concerns are rising prices, soaring crime," National Republican Congressional Committee spokeswoman Samantha Bullock said on Friday.

"Today's Supreme Court ruling returns the issue of abortion to the states and allows voters to decide whether they agree with Democrats' extreme support for taxpayer-funded late-term abortion."

Carol Tobias, president of the National Right to Life, said she expects abortion opponents to turn out in huge numbers this fall.

Fred Yang, a veteran Democratic pollster and strategist who is working in several competitive House and Senate races around the country, told the Los Angeles Times: "Democrats needed an energizing, organizing dynamic and this provides it.

"We've needed something affirmative to say and an issue where we can say affirmatively, we're going to protect your rights. This is it."

Analysts said Democrats also want to use the decision to win support from independents and even some Republicans－especially women－upset at seeing the legal right to abortion removed after almost 50 years.

But Charlie Cook, a nonpartisan analyst who has spent decades studying campaigns and elections, said he is skeptical that Friday's decision will drastically change a political climate dominated by economic issues that work to the benefit of Republicans.

"If this were a level playing field, it might have greater impact," Cook told the Los Angeles Times. "But when you've got the economic situation we've got, with a majority－in some cases a big majority－expecting a recession, high inflation, interest rates shooting up, it's hard for abortion or guns or Jan 6 to cut through all this.

"It's like Democrats have dug themselves into a 10-foot hole," Cook said. "Abortion can fill a foot of it. Jan 6 can fill a foot. But they're still in a deep hole."

Next major front

Supporters of abortion say abortion pills are likely to become the next major front in the battle over reproductive healthcare in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision.

Republican-led states have been moving to limit or even completely ban access to the drugs.

At the National Right to Life convention in Atlanta, a leader of the antiabortion group warned attendees on Saturday that the court's decision ushers in "a time of great possibility and a time of great danger".

Randall O'Bannon, the organization's director of education and research, encouraged activists to celebrate their victories but stay focused. Specifically, he called out medication taken to induce abortion.

"With Roe headed for the dustbin of history, and states gaining the power to limit abortions, this is where the battle is going to be played out over the next several years," O'Bannon said. "The new modern menace is a chemical or medical abortion with pills ordered online and mailed directly to a woman's home."

Medication abortion has become an increasingly common method for ending pregnancies. According to the Guttmacher Institute, a policy and research organization, it accounted for 54 percent of all abortions in 2020.

Immediately following the Supreme Court's ruling, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department will protect the right to an abortion, including with medication.

The Food and Drug Administration has approved the use of the medication Mifepristone. "States may not ban Mifepristone based on disagreement with the FDA's expert judgment about its safety and efficacy," Garland said.

On Friday, Biden said he had directed the Department of Health and Human Services to ensure that abortion pills would be available to the "fullest extent possible", without specifying what measures the department would be taking.