Abortion Rights: Leaked Document Shows US Supreme Court May Overturn Roe v Wade

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A leaked document indicates that a majority of US Supreme Court justices planned to support the reversal of the landmark Roe v Wade case law that legalized abortion.

Politico has published a draft “opinion” of the court that they say is a “total” and “uncompromising repudiation of the 1973 decision” that guaranteed constitutional protection of the right to abortion.

The publication says that the judicial opinion was written by Judge Samuel Alito and circulated inside the court.

The document says that “Roe was terribly wrong from the start.”

It is unclear at this stage whether the draft represents the court’s final word on the matter.

The Supreme Court has not yet issued an official ruling in the case, and opinions, and even the judges’ votes, have been known to change during the drafting process. The court is expected to rule on the case before his term ends in late June or early July.

Within an hour, abortion rights protesters had gathered outside the Supreme Court.
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Within an hour, abortion rights protesters had gathered outside the Supreme Court.

The revelation has been met with dismay by pro-choice groups.

Planned Parenthood tweeted: “While abortion remains legal, tonight’s report makes it clear that our deepest fears are being realized.

“We have reached a time of crisis for access to abortion. We do not have a moment to lose, we must act now.”

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said if the decision stands it would be a “direct attack on women’s dignity, rights and lives, not to mention decades of established laws.”

“It will kill and subjugate women even when the vast majority of Americans think abortion should be legal,” he continued.

“What an absolute shame.”

In a joint statement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said: “If the report is accurate, the Supreme Court is prepared to inflict the greatest restriction on rights over the last fifty years, not just women but all Americans. .

“The informed votes of the Republican-appointed justices to overturn Roe v Wade would be considered an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.”

Senator and Democratic activist Bernie Sanders said people needed to act “NOW” to “pass legislation codifying Roe v Wade as the law of the land.”

Fellow Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren described the Supreme Court as “extremist” and said she wanted to “impose her unpopular far-right views across the country.”

Politician published what he said was labeled as a first draft of the “Opinion of the Court” in a case challenging Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeksa case known as Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The Supreme Court currently has a 6-3 conservative majority. Judge Alito was appointed by former President George W. Bush.

intense debate

Politico says he had signed the February draft opinion which read: “Roe was terribly wrong from the start.

“We hold that Roe and Casey should be overturned,” it adds, referencing the 1992 Planned Parenthood v Casey case that affirmed Roe’s finding of a constitutional right to abortion services but allowed states to impose some restrictions on the practice. .

Analysis by Greg Milam, US correspondent.

The US Supreme Court ruling on abortion is one of the most anticipated and potentially important in decades of American justice.

That makes the leak of a draft ruling all the more surprising and is sure to spark a backlash against the court and states that have pushed to ban abortion.

The content of the leaked opinion, written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, will not have surprised anyone. The court’s conservative lean these days led most to expect it to side with those Republican states when it delivered its final opinion.

When Donald Trump, as a right of the office of president, had the opportunity to appoint three new justices to the court, many commentators saw the writing on the wall. Abortion was an issue that mattered to Trump voters.

But the unprecedented nature of this leak (nothing about the inner workings of the Supreme Court is almost ever leaked, let alone draft opinions) will anger those seeking to protect abortion rights.

If the court, as Alito suggests, strikes down the constitutional right to seek an abortion, it will be up to individual states to ban or restrict it. The ruling would trigger an automatic ban in 13 states and automatically keep it legal in 17 others.

Advocates say it poses health risks for women across the United States, when traveling hundreds of miles to states that allow abortion is not feasible.

The Biden administration has been outspoken in its condemnation of laws restricting abortion. The White House and the United States face a test of how to respond.

The leak of the report came amid a legislative push to restrict abortion in several Republican-led states, Oklahoma being the most recent, even before the court issued its decision.

A Supreme Court spokeswoman said the court had no comment.

The leak fueled the intense political debate that the final decision of the high court was expected to have in the year of the mid-term elections.

Photo: AP
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Polls show that relatively few Americans want Roe overturned. Photo: AP

Politicians on both sides were already taking advantage of it to raise funds and galvanize their supporters on both sides of the contentious issue.

A December poll found that Democrats increasingly view protecting abortion rights as a high priority for the administration.

Other polls show that relatively few Americans want Roe overturned.

The U.S. Supreme Court is seen at dawn on Capitol Hill in Washington, Monday, March 21, 2022. The Senate Judiciary Committee begins historic confirmation hearings Monday for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who would be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
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The Supreme Court of the United States is in Washington DC

In 2020, AP VoteCast found that 69% of voters in presidential elections said the Supreme Court should leave the Roe Wade decision as is; only 29% said the court should reverse the decision.

Overall, the AP-NORC poll finds that the majority of the public favors abortion being legal in most or all cases.

Still, when asked about abortion policy in general, Americans have nuanced attitudes on the subject, with many not believing that abortion is possible after the first trimester or that women should be able to obtain a legal abortion for free. any reason.

Judge Alito said the court cannot predict how the public might react and should not try.

“We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by outside influences, such as concerns about the public’s reaction to our work,” he wrote in the draft opinion, according to Politico.

So far, the court has allowed states to regulate but not prohibit abortion before the point of viability, around 24 weeks.
The three liberal justices on the court seemed to disagree.



Reference-news.sky.com

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