Court threat to abortion rights
THE US Supreme Court is poised to strike down the right to abortion, according to a bombshell leaked draft of a majority opinion that has sparked protests in the country and swift condemnation from leading Democrats.
The draft opinion that would shred nearly 50 years of constitutional protections was written by Justice Samuel Alito and has been circulating inside the conservative-dominated court since February, news outlet Politico reported. The leak of a draft opinion while a case is still pending is an extraordinary breach.
The 98-page draft majority opinion calls the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision enshrining the right to abortion “egregiously wrong from the start. We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito writes in the document, labelled as the “Opinion of the Court” and published on Politico’s website. “It is time to heed the constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
In Roe v Wade, the nation’s highest court held that access to abortion is a constitutional right. In a 1992 ruling, Planned Parenthood v Casey, the court
guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion until the foetus is viable outside the womb, which is typically around 22 to 24 weeks of gestation.
“Abortion presents a profound moral question,” Alito wrote. “The constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each state from regulating or prohibiting abortion.”
Reproductive rights have been under threat in the US in recent months as Republican-led states move to tighten restrictions, with some seeking to ban all abortions after six weeks.
Senior Democrats denounced the court’s apparent move to overturn abortion rights. “If the report is accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years – not just on women but on all Americans,” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement.
“The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.”
Right-wing politicians have launched an assault on abortion, with
Democrats, led by President Joe Biden, fighting back to protect access to the procedure.
Biden said yesterday that US voters would have to defend the “fundamental” right to an abortion as “it will fall on voters to elect” officials who back it in November’s midterm elections.
In December, hearing oral arguments about a Mississippi law that would ban most abortions after 15 weeks, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared inclined to not only uphold the law but to toss out Roe v Wade.
The nine-member court, dominated 6-3 by conservatives following the nomination of three justices by former president Donald Trump, is expected to issue a decision in the Mississippi case by June. Politico said four other conservative justices – Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – had voted with Alito, the author of the first draft of the majority opinion.
It said the three liberal justices in the court were working on a dissent and it was unknown how Chief Justice John Roberts would ultimately vote.
Politico stressed that the document it obtained was a draft and justices did sometimes change their votes before a final ruling.
Several hundred people, including abortion rights supporters and antichoice demonstrators, gathered outside the Supreme Court building this week chanting, “My body, my choice!”
The leak of a draft opinion is extraordinary while a case is still being decided. The Supreme Court declined to comment.
The Guttmacher Institute, a prochoice research group, has said that 26 states were “certain or likely” to ban abortion if Roe v Wade was overturned. Democratic governors of several states, including California, New Mexico and Michigan, announced plans to enshrine abortion rights even if the court overturns Roe v Wade.
New York governor Kathy Hochul said it was “an absolutely disgraceful attack on our fundamental right to choose. Let me be loud and clear: New York will always guarantee your right to abortion,” she said on Twitter.
Planned Parenthood, which operates abortion clinics around the country, said the draft opinion was “outrageous” that it “is not final”.