London’s mayor on draft abortion ruling: Roe ‘cannot and must not be undone’

(AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
Re-elected Mayor of London Sadiq Khan holds a speech after the result declaration at City Hall, in London, Saturday, May 8, 2021. Millions of people across Britain have voted on Thursday, in local elections, the biggest set of votes since the 2019 general election.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan criticized the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion in which justices appear to have voted to overturn the landmark abortion ruling Roe v. Wade, saying that the decision to legalize abortion “cannot and must not be undone.”

“London stands with women across the United States today,” the mayor wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning. “Roe v Wade enshrined women’s fundamental rights over their own bodies and access to healthcare. That cannot and must not be undone.”

The documents, which were first published by Politico Monday evening, would effectively eliminate abortion protections at the federal level and assign such access authority to the states.

Khan joins other U.K. lawmakers in voicing disapproval of the news. Diane Abbott, a Labour party member of the British Parliament, warned that the decision “may signal a wave of moves to right wing social policy across Europe and North America.”

First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon also spoke out against the decision to overturn the 1973 ruling.

“The right of women to decide what happens to our own bodies is a human right,” she wrote on Twitter Tuesday morning. “And experience tells us that removing the legal right to abortion doesn’t stop abortions happening – it just makes them unsafe and puts the lives of women at much greater risk.”

Politico published a draft opinion it had obtained, the first time in modern history such a document has been leaked from the Supreme Court.

Tags Abortion abortion access Nicola Sturgeon Roe v. Wade Sadiq Khan UK

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