By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY -The Vatican’s Academy for Life on Friday praised the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on abortion, saying it challenged the world to reflect on life issues, but also called for social changes to help women keep their children.

The Vatican department also said in a statement that the defence of human life could not be confined to individual rights because life is a matter of “broad social significance”.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday took the dramatic step of overturning the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that recognised a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion and legalized it nationwide.

“The fact that a large country with a long democratic tradition has changed its position on this issue also challenges the whole world,” the academy said in a statement.

U.S. President Joe Biden, a lifelong Catholic, condemned the ruling, calling it a “sad day” for America and labelling the court’s conservatives “extreme”.

Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, who heads the Pontifical Academy for Life, said the court’s decision was a “powerful invitation to reflect” on the issue at a time when Western society “is losing passion for life”.

“By choosing life, our responsibility for the future of humanity is at stake,” Paglia said.

The Roman Catholic church teaches that abortion is murder because life begins at the moment of conception and ends with natural death.

Pope Francis has compared having an abortion to “hiring a hit man” to eliminate a problematic person.

The academy statement also called for changes in social conditions to make it easier to defend life in all its stages.

“This also means ensuring adequate sexual education, guaranteeing health care accessible to all and preparing legislative measures to protect the family and motherhood, overcoming existing inequalities,” it said.

“We need solid assistance to mothers, couples and the unborn child that involve the whole community, encouraging the possibility for mothers in difficulty to carry on with the pregnancy and to entrust the child to those who can guarantee the child’s growth,” it said.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; writing by Angelo Amante; editing by Giulia Segreti, Leslie Adler and Nick Macfie)

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON – Leading Democrats sought to turn Friday’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade into a rallying cry for the November elections, warning of grim consequences for women, contraception and gay marriage if Republicans regain control of Congress.

In a 5-4 ruling powered by its conservative majority, the high court overturned the 1973 landmark decision that had recognized a woman’s right to an abortion, and had legalized it nationwide, for nearly half a century.

The decision was greeted as a stunning victory by anti-abortion Republicans and other conservatives, while Democrats and abortion-right activists protested what they described as a step backwards for the rights of American women.

But with control of the House of Representatives and the Senate at stake in the Nov. 8 midterm elections, Democrats also warned that the rights of women and others would face further dangers if Republicans regain control of Congress.

“The Republicans are plotting a nationwide abortion ban. They cannot be allowed to have a majority in the Congress to do that,” said House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the chamber’s top Democrat, told reporters.

“It is clear that we just have to win a majority in November. Everything is at stake,” added Pelosi, a Catholic who was barred from taking communion last month by the archbishop of San Francisco because of her support for abortion rights.

About 71% of Americans – including majorities of Democrats and Republicans – say decisions about terminating a pregnancy should be left to a woman and her doctor, rather than regulated by the government, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling.

Democrats hope voter anger about the Supreme Court’s decision will help them retain their razor-thin margins of control in the House and Senate. With President Joe Biden’s approval rating slumping, most forecasters have so far favored Republicans’ chances of winning a majority in at least the House.

“This fall, Roe is on the ballot. Personal freedoms are on the ballot. The right to privacy, liberty, equality are all about it,” Biden said on Friday.

It was not clear how easily Democrats could use the abortion rights message to mobilize support. Despite having control of the White House and both chambers of Congress for nearly 18 months, Biden and his Democratic allies have disappointed their core supporters with repeated failures on hot-button issues including abortion, voting rights and social spending.

Efforts to reform the Senate filibuster and overcome Republican opposition to the Biden agenda have been hamstrung by opposition from within their own party, specifically Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Even their success at enacting moderate gun-safety legislation proved uninspiring to strong gun-control advocates and was overshadowed twice by the Supreme Court, which broadly expanded gun rights a day before overturning Roe v. Wade.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said voters would now have a clear choice between Democrats and “MAGA Republicans,” using an acronym for allies of former President Donald Trump.

“Elect more MAGA Republicans if you want nationwide abortion bans, the jailing of women and doctors and no exemptions for rape or incest. Or, elect more pro-choice Democrats to save Roe,” Schumer said in a statement.

House Republicans welcomed the ruling and talked openly about a path forward to “end abortion in this country.”

“The Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, overturning that flawed decision finally allows states and Congress to protect life in ways that we never were able to for the last 50 years,” Representative Steve Scalise, the No. 2 House Republican, told reporters.

(Reporting by David Morgan; additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Katharine Jackson and Moira Warburton; Editing by Scott Malone and Alistair Bell)

By Tom Balmforth

KYIV – It took Russia weeks of fierce fighting, an untold number of casualties, and relentless shelling before the exhausted Ukrainian defenders of Sievierodonetsk received orders to quit its smouldering wreckage.

“Remaining in positions smashed to pieces over many months just for the sake of staying there does not make sense,” Serhiy Gaidai, governor of the wider region, said on Ukrainian television on Friday.

With a reported 90% of the industrial city’s buildings damaged, most of its around 100,000 residents long gone, and with limited strategic value beyond a sprawling chemicals plant, it does not look like much of a prize.

But its capture, if and when officially confirmed, is likely to be hailed by Russia as evidence that its switch from its early and unsuccessful attempts at “lightning warfare” to a much slower grinding offensive which relies more on long-range shelling rather than close-quarters combat, is paying off.

Sievierodonetsk would be the biggest Ukrainian city Russia has captured since it took the port of Mariupol last month.

“Our military has changed tactics,” said one Russian government official.

“They know how to do it now. Yes it’s slow, but the strategy works and it means far less casualties,” said the official, who declined to be named because they were not authorised to speak on the subject.

Konrad Muzyka, a Poland-based military analyst, said the tactical change meant Moscow could commit fewer troops to offensives amid unconfirmed Western suggestions that Russia is experiencing manpower problems.

“Whatever they did, it is working for them,” said Muzyka.

“Another thing is we don’t know what’s going on with the Ukrainians; their manpower, losses and so on. From their point of view officially, everything is rosy. But it certainly is not this way.”

Moscow calls its invasion, which began on Feb. 24, a “special military operation” to liberate territory controlled by Ukrainian nationalists whom it says are hostile to Russian speakers and intent on taking Kyiv into NATO, a move Russia says it cannot accept.

The West and Ukraine accuse Russia of waging an unjustified war of aggression designed to halt Kyiv’s legitimate westwards drift and accuse the Kremlin of trying to recreate parts of the Russian Empire.

‘FIRST WORLD WAR APPROACH’

The fall of Sievierodonetsk would leave only one other major settlement in Ukraine’s Luhansk region outside the control of Russia and its proxies – the nearby twin city of Lysychansk, which lies across the Siverskyi Donets River and on high ground, making it harder to overwhelm.

Luhansk is one of two regions which make up the wider Donbas area whose capture by Russian forces on behalf of proxy separatists is framed by Moscow as one of its main aims.

Ukrainian analysts say Kyiv is forcing Russia to pay a high price for its creeping progress.

The length of time Sievierodonetsk’s defenders held out slowed Russian efforts elsewhere and sucked up Moscow’s finite resources, they say.

“Our forces had to withdraw and conduct a tactical retreat because there was essentially nothing left there to defend,” said Oleksander Musiyenko, a Kyiv-based military analyst.

“There was no city left there and, secondly, we could not allow them (Ukrainian forces) to be encircled. Everything could be a lot worse if Russia’s troops had been able to take Sievierodonetsk in the space of a day three weeks ago,” he said.

One Moscow-based military analyst who declined to be named, citing Russia’s wartime censorship laws, compared the fighting around Sievierodonetsk to World War One, saying Russian forces had advanced only around 100 metres a day for the last month.

Russia’s aims at this point in the conflict were less about gaining territory, he suggested, and more about inflicting maximum casualties.

“Russia’s strategy is a First World War approach of breaking your opponents. It could work – there is some evidence that Ukrainian morale is a problem,” said the analyst.

If, as seems likely, Russia continues with the same tactics, its offensive against Ukraine, which says it has just taken delivery of new long-range U.S. weapons designed to help it dual with Russian artillery, could be protracted.

Russia still faces major obstacles in its campaign to control Donbas as Ukraine still controls almost half of the Donetsk region, the other region it is targeting, including the heavily fortified cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, both of which are larger than Sievierodonetsk.

Russia’s attention is now likely to turn swiftly to the city of Lysychansk across the river where Ukrainian forces have heavily fortified positions, the last major part of the Luhansk region it does not control.

“We have to understand that they (Russia) will probably try to attack the city from two or three sides,” said Musiyenko.

(Additional reporting by Reuters reporters; Editing by Alistair Bell)

By Sharon Bernstein, Gabriella Borter and Brad Brooks

(Reuters) – For a Mississippi doctor, it was a glimpse of a fetal arm. For a police officer, it was the treatment of anti-abortion protesters outside a clinic. A Catholic leader was galvanized by the civil rights movement.

These and other experiences shaped prominent abortion opponents in their decades-long effort to see the U.S. Supreme Court reverse the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that established the constitutional right to abortion.

That long-awaited moment came on Friday, when the conservative-led court overturned Roe. Four leaders of the anti-abortion movement reflect on how they reached this point.

DR. BEVERLY MCMILLAN

Most Fridays, Dr. Beverly McMillan, 79, can be found praying outside Mississippi’s only abortion clinic.

Her quiet opposition is a far cry from the start of her obstetrics and gynecology career. In 1975, McMillan became the first doctor to provide abortions at Mississippi’s first free-standing abortion clinic.

She resigned abruptly three years later, she said, “struck with the humanity” of a pregnancy she aborted. In an interview, she recalled how she could make out the tiny arm muscle of a 12-week-old fetus, reminding her of her young son.

The Jackson, Mississippi, resident has dedicated much of the four decades since trying to sway public opinion against abortion.

About 60% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Even so, McMillan and fellow anti-abortion advocates successfully pushed for legislation such as her state’s 15-week abortion ban, which spurred the legal battle that led to the Supreme Court ending federal protections for abortion.

McMillan, who serves as vice president on the Pro-Life Mississippi board, said the organization was dedicated to getting practical support for women struggling in pregnancy.

“While this was a necessary step in continuing to build a culture of life in America, there is still a lot of work to be done,” she said after the ruling.

She hopes one day there will be a “personhood amendment” to the U.S. Constitution that says what to her has long been obvious: “Human life begins at conception and has the same inalienable rights that born people have.”

TONY PERKINS

Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, a Christian policy and lobbying group in Washington, says he felt called to the anti-abortion movement on a summer day in 1992.

He was off duty from his job as a reserve police officer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and had joined members of his church to check out an Operation Rescue protest at a local abortion clinic. He was shocked by what he called police abuse of the hundreds of anti-abortion protesters gathered at the clinic.

He spoke out and was fired from the force, he said.

“I just saw this for the first time in a much different light,” said Perkins, an ordained Southern Baptist minister. “This really is a colossal battle between … good and evil.”

Upon entering politics and serving as a Louisiana state representative from 1996 to 2004, he pushed through legislation aimed at restricting abortion, including the first version of a state law regulating women’s health clinics. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law in 2020.

Perkins, 59, said abortion became the litmus test for evangelical Christians as their political force grew in the last three decades: If a politician opposed abortion, they likely agreed with evangelical voters’ other policy stances.

He credits the Roman Catholic Church with leading the way in the abortion fight but said evangelicals injected new energy into the movement from the 1980s onward by getting anti-abortion politicians elected to statehouses.

Those socially conservative lawmakers passed a raft of state-level restrictions on abortion.

Soon after the ruling on Friday, Perkins tweeted he was “grateful that the tyranny of Roe has ended.”

THERESA BRENNAN

In February 2020, Theresa Brennan left her job as a corporate lawyer to take the helm of the anti-abortion group her grandparents helped found in California in 1967.

The Right to Life League says it was the country’s first organization dedicated to opposing abortion. Brennan remembers how as a child she longed to join her grandparents and parents at the group’s annual fundraising gala.

Later as a young woman, she disagreed with their stance, feeling it wasn’t her place to tell others what to do with their bodies. It wasn’t until she had her own children that Brennan says she fully embraced her family’s anti-abortion beliefs and, later, their activism.

“I think being pregnant and realizing what that was really made me think twice,” said Brennan, 52.

Since becoming the group’s president, Brennan has put her legal background to work providing advice to the network of crisis pregnancy centers, anti-abortion medical clinics and maternity homes the organization represents.

As some of the pregnancy centers move toward becoming clinics that provide some medical guidance and services, Brennan helps them comply with state laws regulating such activity.

Her organization also lobbies against abortion rights bills and provides donations of diapers and other supplies to pregnancy centers and maternity homes.

The end of Roe v. Wade makes it all the more important to direct funds and other resources to help women and children, she said.

“It would transform the entire movement, I’m certain of it, if we could just get the resources,” she said. “Because if women really felt supported and had the resources, they would choose to have their baby.”

ARCHBISHOP JOSEPH NAUMANN

Under Archbishop Joseph Naumann’s direction, the Archdiocese of Kansas City has put $500,000 behind an August ballot measure asking Kansas voters to amend the state constitution to say it does not include a right to an abortion.

With Roe overturned, Naumann called on “all Catholics and all people of good will” to support the amendment.

“I am grateful the Supreme Court has returned the right to the people to determine public policy that protects the lives of unborn children as well as their mothers from the tragedy of abortion,” he said in a statement.

Naumann, 73, was in seminary in 1973 when the Roe decision legalized abortion in the United States. Like other devout Catholics, he opposed abortion, but at the time he was more focused on the civil rights movement.

He said he began to view abortion through the lens of civil rights in 1984, when he was asked to lead the church’s anti-abortion efforts in St. Louis. He felt the right to life was fundamental to the unborn, who he believed were fully human from the moment of conception.

“Of course it is a right of a woman to decide when to bear a child, but once that child is conceived, there are two human beings who both have rights at that point,” he said.

The archbishop said the St. Louis role taught him numerous ways to fight abortion, at church and beyond, and he took that knowledge with him as he rose through its hierarchy. He served seven years on the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities including as chairman.

He has joined bishops who have said President Joe Biden and other Catholic leaders who support abortion rights should not take Communion.

Naumann said he has deep sympathy for women facing unplanned or difficult pregnancies. He was raised by a single mother, he said, after his father was murdered at work while she was pregnant with Naumann.

(Reporting by Sharon Bernstein, Gabriella Borter and Brad Brooks; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Cynthia Osterman)

By Lawrence Hurley

WASHINGTON -Seventeen months after leaving office, former President Donald Trump delivered on a campaign promise on Friday when the conservative U.S. Supreme Court majority he cemented overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

The ruling represented a victory long in the making for a well-organized and generously funded conservative movement to push America’s courts rightward, aided by legal activists and deft political maneuvering by top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell.

Trump during his four years as president appointed three justices – Neil Gorsuch in 2017, Brett Kavanaugh in 2018 and Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 – to give a court that had been ideologically deadlocked with four liberals and four conservatives when he took office a solid 6-3 conservative majority by the time he left.

All three appointees were in the majority in the decision to overturn Roe.

The month before Trump’s election in November 2016, the Republican businessman-turned-politician promised during a debate with his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton to appoint justices who would overturn the Roe decision.

“Well, if we put another two or perhaps three justices on, that … will happen automatically in my opinion because I am putting pro-life justices on the court,” Trump said at the time.

Trump’s pitch appealed to conservative Christian voters, who became a key constituency during his presidency.

“Today’s decision, which is the biggest WIN for LIFE in a generation, along with other decisions that have been announced recently, were only made possible because I delivered everything as promised, including nominating and getting three highly respected and strong Constitutionalists confirmed to the United States Supreme Court,” Trump said in a statement on Friday. “It was my great honor to do so!”

Having lost in 2020, Trump continues to flirt publicly with the idea of running again for president in 2024.

Critics have sought to paint the Roe decision as poorly reasoned liberal judicial activism. Driven by vocal support from an anti-abortion movement spearheaded by conservative Christians, they pursued the goal of appointing judges hostile to abortion rights.

“The overturning of this case after the five decades of morass that Roe created is a major victory for constitutionalism and the rule of law,” said Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal group that has helped promote Republican judicial appointments.

“Roe v. Wade was one of the greatest acts of judicial arrogance in Supreme Court history – and one of the catalysts for the birth and growth of the conservative legal movement,” Severino added.

Democratic President Joe Biden on Friday acknowledged Trump’s critical role in overturning Roe.

“Three justices named by one president, Donald Trump, were the core of today’s decision to upend the scales of justice and eliminate a fundamental right for women in this country,” Biden said.

‘BREAK-GLASS MOMENT’

For liberal legal advocates, the ruling represented a “break-glass moment,” said Brian Fallon, executive director of legal advocacy group Demand Justice.

“Now the question is, will our side regroup and productively channel the public’s outrage to confront a court that has been captured?” Fallon asked.

The Supreme Court for decades had a majority of Republican appointees but until now lacked the five votes needed to overturn Roe. The last time it had been so close was in 1992 in a case called Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey.

Conservative activists were disappointed by the 5-4 ruling that reaffirmed the central holding of Roe recognizing a woman’s right to obtain an abortion under the U.S. Constitution. Three Republican appointees – Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter – worked behind the scenes on a compromise that carried the day.

It was later revealed that Kennedy initially had supported overturning Roe but changed his mind. Trump appointed Kavanaugh to replace Kennedy, who retired in 2018.

Trump and McConnell – who have an icy relationship – were critical in engineering the demise of Roe. McConnell, as Senate majority leader, in 2016 blocked Democratic President Barack Obama from appointing a justice to the court in the last year of his term after conservative Justice Antonin Scalia died. Obama’s nominee would have given the court a 5-4 liberal majority.

McConnell’s action meant Trump was able to replace Scalia with fellow conservative Gorsuch. McConnell shepherded Kavanaugh to Senate confirmation in 2018 after a contentious confirmation process in which the nominee denied sexual misconduct. McConnell then moved rapidly with Senate confirmation of Barrett a week before the 2020 election in which Trump was defeated.

Barrett, a devout Roman Catholic and former legal scholar, previously had signaled support for overturning Roe.

RELIABLE CONSERVATIVES

Since the Casey ruling, Republican presidents have chosen a stream of reliably conservative nominees nurtured and promoted by connections to the influential Federalist Society. A key figure in that effort has been Leonard Leo, who has had a lengthy career at the conservative legal group and has advised Republican presidents in picking judicial nominees.

Leo helped compile a list of potential Supreme Court nominees that Trump touted as a candidate before the 2016 election in a bid to attract conservative voters. Leo did not respond to messages seeking comment for this story.

Conservative advocacy groups including the Judicial Confirmation Network have helped promote and defend conservative judicial nominees. Anti-abortion organizations also have staunchly backed Republican judicial nominees.

“This victory represents proof of concept for the pro-life movement’s involvement in campaigns and elections and will spur more pro-life political activism in the years ahead,” said Mallory Carroll, a spokeswoman for one of those groups, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.

(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Andrew Chung; Editing by Scott Malone, Will Dunham and Howard Goller)