Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis took aim at the judges’ ruling.
“Really troubled by the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court,” Mitsotakis wrote on Twitter. “It is a major step back in the fight for women’s rights.”
Roe v. Wade of 1973 was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court in which the Court ruled that the Constitution generally protects a pregnant woman’s liberty to choose to have an abortion. With the ruling overturned, abortion rights will be determined by states, barring intervention from Congress.
On Friday, U.S. President Joe Biden issued a statement lamenting the decision and calling it a “sad day” for his country.
“The court laid out state laws criminalizing abortion that go back to the 1800s … the court literally taking America back 150 years,” Biden said at a news conference. “It’s a sad day for the country, but it doesn’t mean the fight is over.”
Former President Barack Obama also issued a tweet criticizing the court’s decision.
“Today, the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues–attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americas,” Obama wrote.
Abortion in Greece has been fully legalized since 1986, when Law 1609/1986 was passed on July 3 of that year.
In an academic paper from 1991 titled “The triviality of abortion in Greece,” psychologist Despina Naziri says that abortion was legalized in the country only because it came to the government’s attention that the previous prohibition had been ignored.
“Abortion is strongly affected by social and psychological factors that are complex and result from cultural view points about fertility, maternal value and life itself that are unique to the Greek culture,” Naziri wrote in the study.
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