A leaked draft of a US Supreme Court opinion shows that a majority of five justices have decided to allow states to ban abortion by overturning landmark cases of abortion. Roe vs. Wade Y Planned Parenthood vs. Casey and uphold a Mississippi law that criminalizes termination of a pregnancy after 15 weeks.
The draft opinion, reported for the first time by politician – appears to have been written by Judge Samuel Alito, and is dated February 10. He indicates that he, along with Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett voted to overturn Roe Y Casey after hearing oral arguments in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“We hold that roe and casey must be annulled,” he wrote. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the elected representatives of the people.”
A former supreme secretary who reviewed the draft opinion said the independent it is “consistent” with the work product produced during the internal deliberative processes of the court. The authenticity of the document could not be immediately verified by other news organizations.
The immediate impact of such a decision would be to ban abortion across a wide swath of the United States, forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term unless they can travel to a state where abortion is legal under state law, or run the risk of undergoing an illegal procedure. outside licensed medical facilities.
Giving states the right to ban abortion would reverse half a century of precedent and fulfill as many years of work by religious activists who have opposed the advent of legal abortion because they believe life begins at conception..
It would also represent a major victory for Republicans, who have sought for decades to reform the judiciary in a direction often more hostile to the rights of women and minorities. All five judges voted to overturn Roe Y Casey they were appointed by Republican presidents, and four of the five are conservative Catholics.
Legal experts have said that nullifying Roe Y Casey it would also give the court’s conservative majority a start down a path that could end with the annulment of other landmark cases based on it, including Obergefell vs. Hodges, the 2015 case that legalized same-sex marriage in the United States, and United States v Windsorwhich repealed the Federal Defense of Marriage Law.
Many of the same religious activists who have called for the overthrow Roe for decades have also expressed the desire that the court invalidate Griswold vs. Connecticut, another landmark case that established the right of married couples to use contraception.
But in the draft document, Judge Alito said it was not the court’s job to worry about the consequences of the decision.
“We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by outside influences, such as concerns about the public’s reaction to our work,” he wrote. “We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision that annuls Roe Y Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would not have the authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.”
The leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion is unprecedented in the court’s history and could indicate the alarm felt by minority justices, or their clerks, that the court’s conservative majority will take away a right that many women consider. as a necessity for full participation in civic life and the economy.
Because the court’s opinion in the case has not yet been released, one or more justices may have decided to reverse course in the intervening months since the opinion was circulated among the justices.
In an email sent to politician personal and informed by a New York Times Media reporter, editor-in-chief Matt Kaminski and executive editor Dafna Linzer said they were “confident” in the authenticity of the draft document.
Reference-www.independent.co.uk