Washington, (AFP) - The US Congressional Police announced that they had arrested 17 parliamentarians, including the rising leftist representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, on Tuesday in front of the Capitol building, because of their refusal to obey her orders during their participation in a demonstration in defense of the right to abortion.

"We have arrested 35 people in total," the Capitol Police said in a tweet, including "17 members of Congress."

She explained that she had ordered the demonstrators to clear the street between the Capitol building and the Supreme Court, but some of them refused to comply with her orders, and after she issued three warnings to them, she arrested them.

For her part, Democratic Representative Ilhan Omar said in a tweet on Twitter that the Capitol Police stopped her during her participation in "civil disobedience."

Omar, who, along with Ocasio-Cortez, is considered a symbol of the left wing of the Democratic Party, added, "I will do everything in my power to sound the alarm about the assault on our reproductive rights."

A video clip posted by Ocasio-Cortez on her Twitter account showed a policeman escorting her out of the road separating the Congress and Supreme Court buildings.

According to the Axios news website, the 17 parliamentarians who were arrested are all Democratic representatives, and most of them are women.

At the end of June, the Supreme Court overturned the historic ruling it issued in 1973, in which it considered that women's right to abortion is enshrined in the United States Constitution, in a decision that returned the United States to the situation that was in force before 1973 when every state was free to allow abortion or to ban it.

In 1973, at the end of its consideration of the Roe v. Wade case, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that set a judicial precedent, as it guaranteed the right of a woman to voluntarily terminate her pregnancy as long as her fetus is unable to survive outside her womb, that is, until about 22 weeks from the start of pregnancy. .

However, the highest judicial body in the United States overturned this decision, and therefore the right to abortion is no longer enshrined in the federal constitution, but rather varies from state to state.

The balance of power within the Supreme Court changed radically during the reign of former President Donald Trump, who appointed three of its nine judges, and chose all of them from conservatives, so that the majority of two-thirds became conservatives (six to three).