Supreme Court leak ignites US abortion firestorm
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden urged voters Tuesday to defend “fundamental” rights after a leaked Supreme Court draft ruling indicated the imminent end to nationwide legal abortion, long viewed as a basic freedom by tens of millions of Americans.
If the draft ruling is confirmed by the court, it would overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which enshrined abortion rights across the country. Instantly, abortion laws would be left up to individual state legislatures, with as many as half expected to enact bans or new restrictions.
For many women, the potential loss of abortion rights across swaths of the United States raises the prospect of being forced to travel hundreds of miles for the procedure or giving birth in traumatic circumstances.
Outside the Supreme Court building in the heart of Washington, more than a thousand protesters on both sides of the hotly-debated issue gathered Tuesday.
“It’s an obscene invasion of women’s privacy and their abilities to decide what to do with their own bodies,” Adriane Busby, a 40-year-old political analyst, told AFP.
“I didn’t think that we would have to be here in 2022, debating, protesting this. It’s a regression,” the Washington resident said.
Republicans have pushed hard for years to overturn Roe, and it became only a matter of time after three conservative justices were appointed under former president Donald Trump, shifting the Supreme Court’s political balance sharply to the right.
The leaked ruling’s publication late Monday by the US news site Politico thrust the intensely divisive issue to the center of the November congressional midterms elections, potentially opening a path for beleaguered Democrats to stem expected losses.
Biden, whose Democrats have been forecast to lose their already narrow control of Congress, issued a rallying cry to the left, warning that restricting abortion rights will be only the beginning.
“I believe that a woman’s right to choose is fundamental... and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned,” Biden said in a written statement.
“It will fall on voters to elect” officials who back abortion rights, he said, vowing to work to pass legislation in Congress that codifies Roe v. Wade -- a goal impossible to achieve unless far more Democrats win seats.
Speaking later to reporters, Biden went further, calling the draft ruling “radical” and warning of a “fundamental shift in American jurisprudence” that could put into question the future of gay marriage and “how you raise your child.”
In New York, thousands of protesters rallied outside a federal courthouse in Manhattan chanting “Abortion is a human right, fight fight fight.”
“You can only ban safe abortion. You cannot prevent women from taking their own reproductive choices out of their own hands. That’s a fantasy,” said Kaytlin Bailey, 35.
The leak of the draft ruling was unprecedented, knocking another hole in the once hallowed reputation of the top court as the one apolitical branch in the US government.
Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed that the document released by Politico was authentic, although he cautioned that this did not necessarily represent the court’s final decision. Roberts ordered a probe into the leak.