Abortion rights activists protest after the US Supreme Court struck down Roe Vs. Wade, overturning the right to abortion, in Portland, Oregon, US, on June 24, 2022. Photo: AFP

The Handmaid's Tale seems to be becoming a reality in the US as many US women experienced their darkest day on Friday as the US Supreme Court overruled the landmark Roe v Wade ruling of 1973, which will lead to a total ban on abortions in roughly half of all US states. The move has drawn wide condemnation around the world as many described it as an attack on women's freedoms and rights, a serious setback, and will further split an already divided US society, lighting the fuse on a dangerous political bomb.

Chinese observers and legal professionals the Global Times talked to on Saturday said the controversial ruling, especially ahead of the midterm election, brutally deprives US citizens' basic human rights and dealt a huge blow to women's fundamental right. 

The US public has increasingly become the victim of political division of the GOP and Democrats, they added. 

The vote was 5-4 in favor of overturning Roe. And at least 21 states have laws or constitutional amendments already in place that would make them certain to attempt to ban abortion as quickly as possible, according to the Guttmacher Institute, which favors abortion rights. And an additional four states are likely to ban abortions as soon as possible without federal protections, CNN reported. 

The US court's decision was "a major setback" and a "huge blow to women's human rights and gender equality," UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet said in a statement.

A spokesperson for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said restricting abortion access does not stop people from seeking the procedure, "it only makes it more deadly."

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said he expected more of the US when it came to the protection of women's rights.

"I am very disappointed, because women's rights must be protected. And I would have expected America to protect such rights," he said.

Leaders from all over the world, including those from countries that are US' close allies, also criticized the ruling. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson all voiced strong disapproval over the ruling.

"The ruling inflicted huge damage to the American women's basic rights and interests," Longzhu Liu, a Chinese-American lawyer based in Los Angeles, California, told the Global Times on Saturday.

The ruling upends the federal precedents of the landmark Roe v Wade ruling of 1973 which protects women's rights and access to an abortion till the second trimester, and now the overturning decision would mean there will be "no abortion at all period" in those conservative states without the federal precedents, Liu explained. 

Having a baby and raising children would impose huge burden to innocent mothers for a lifetime who get pregnant during accidents such as a drunk sex or from a rape, and depriving their rights to abortion would devastate their lives, Liu said. 

A woman cries outside the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on June 24, 2022, when the conservative-dominated court ended the right to abortion in a seismic ruling that shreds half a century of constitutional protections in one of the most divisive and bitterly fought issues in American political life. Photo: AFP

It was a big victory for the conservatives in the US. The ruling will encourage them to embrace even more extremist views and polarize society even further, observers said.

US President Joe Biden said Friday that the health and life of women in the US are now at risk. "It's a sad day for the court and for the country." Speaking from the White House, Biden called on Congress to codify the right to abortion, which is unlikely given the split balance of power in the Senate, according to CNN.

Biden pointed fingers to the three justices named by his predecessor Donald Trump, who were the core of Friday's decision, saying, "Make no mistake, this decision is a culmination of a deliberate effort over decades to upset the balance of our law."

"It's a realization of an extreme ideology and a tragic error of the Supreme Court in my view," he added.

Liu said that it also showed the hypocrisy of the US judicial system. "The voting is not based on rationality of justice, but on their political and ideological stance." 

Former US president Barack Obama criticized the decision, saying the high court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent but it "relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues -- attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans."

Lü Xiang, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told the Global Times on Saturday that the ruling will not have much impact on US midterm election.

"It will have some impact but it won't affect the general situation. Economic issue is still the most important one for voters. While Democrats are inspiring more women to vote, the vote is unlikely to overturn the Supreme Court and upend its decision," he said.

Friday's ruling, according to Lü, also exposed the irrationality of US judicial system.

He noted that there is a great contingency in US' Supreme Court system. Former US president Donald Trump got the chance to name three justices during his 4-year presidency, which is rare, as US law stipulated that each justice has lifetime tenure, meaning they will remain in office until they die, retire, resign or are removed from office.

The three conservative justices are still young and they will have a long-lasting influence in the US, he said. 

A broad majority of Americans did not want to see Roe v Wade overturned, polling taken before the Supreme Court's decision shows. 

In a May CNN poll, Americans said, 66 to 34 percent, that they did not want the Supreme Court to completely overturn its decision. In the CNN poll, 58 percent of US adults said that, if Roe were overturned, they'd want their state to set abortion laws that were more permissive than restrictive. About half said they'd like to see their state become a safe haven for women who wanted abortions but couldn't get them where they lived.

Lü said that the politicians' decision will let minorities in the US, especially young black women, suffer the cost the most. Many women who are not married and who don't have enough resources to raise children have to face the reality of raising children alone. This will lead to serious societal problems.

US activists pointed out access to abortion is essential for the well-being of black women, who face higher rates of both poverty and maternal mortality, according to an NPR report.

Lü warned that the gloomy US economy aggravated by the conservative legislation will drag US society into more chaos.

Liu said that among different racial groups, opinions also differ over abortion rights, those with deep religious backgrounds and in the conservative states such as the Mexican and African American groups in southern states are in favor of the ban, while Asian group tend to favor more liberal rights to decide to have a child or not. 

The Friday ruling also quickly went viral on China's social media platforms with many expressing sympathy with US women. The topic was trending on China's twitter-like platform Sina Weibo on Saturday.

"From today, I will sniff at the so-called freedom in the US. American women should buy guns to protect their rights," one netizen wrote.

"In the 'self-claimed' greatest country in the world, women cannot even make their own decisions for their own wombs," one netizen commented. "Where is the freedom and basic rights in the US? Nine justices could rule the 160 million women," another said. 

Some also said they were not surprised that this happened in the US, a country that is used to correcting rights to wrongs and going backwards.