Biden blasts draft, warns other rights are at risk
» President Joe Biden on Tuesday blasted a “radical” Supreme Court draft opinion that would throw out the landmark Roe vs. Wade abortion rights ruling that has stood for almost half a century. The court cautioned no final decision had been made, but Biden warned that other privacy rights, including same-sex marriage and birth control, are at risk if the justices follow through.
Chief Justice John Roberts said he had ordered an investigation into what he called the “egregious breach of trust” in leaking the draft document,
which was dated to February. Opinions often change in ways big and small in the drafting process, and a final ruling is not been expected until the end of the court’s term in late June or early July.
Across the nation, Americans grappled with what might come next. The Democratic-controlled Congress and White House vowed to try to blunt the impact of such a ruling, but their prospects looked dim.
A decision to overrule Roe would have sweeping ramifications, leading to abortion bans in roughly half the states, sparking new efforts in Democraticleaning states to protect access to abortion, and potentially reshaping the contours of this year’s hotly contested midterm elections.
The draft was published by the news outlet Politico late Monday.
Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One, Biden said he hoped the draft wouldn’t be finalized by justices, contending it reflects a “fundamental shift in American jurisprudence” that threatens “other basic rights” like access to birth control and marriage.
“If this decision holds, it’s really quite a radical decision,” he added.
“If the court does overturn Roe, it will fall on our nation’s elected officials at all levels of government to protect a woman’s right to choose,” Biden said. “And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November. At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law.”
Though past efforts have failed, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he intended to hold a vote.
“This is as urgent and real as it gets,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “Every American is going to see on which side every senator stands.”
Leaders in New York and California rolled out the welcome mat to their states for women seeking abortions, and other Democratic states moved to protect access to abortion in their laws.
The court’s ruling would be most acutely felt by women who don’t have the means or ability to travel from states that have or stand poised to pass stiff abortion restrictions or outright bans.
Whatever the outcome, the Politico report late Monday represented an extremely rare breach of the court’s secretive deliberation process, and on a case of surpassing importance.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” the draft opinion states. It was signed by Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority who was appointed by former President George W. Bush.
The document was labeled a “1st Draft” of the “Opinion of the Court” in a case challenging Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks. The draft opinion in effect states there is no constitutional right to abortion services. It would allow individual states to more heavily regulate or outright ban the procedure.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” it states, referencing the 1992 case Planned Parenthood vs. Casey that affirmed Roe’s finding of a constitutional right to abortion services but allowed states to place some constraints on the practice. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
The draft opinion strongly suggests that when the justices met in private shortly after arguments in the case on Dec. 1, at least five — all the conservatives except perhaps Chief Justice Roberts — voted to overrule Roe and Casey, and Alito was assigned the task of writing the court’s majority opinion.
Votes and opinions aren’t final until a decision is announced.
Politico said only that it received “a copy of the draft opinion from a person familiar with the court’s proceedings in the Mississippi case along with other details supporting the authenticity of the document.”
The report comes amid a legislative push to restrict abortion in several Republican-led states — Oklahoma being the most recent — even before the court issues its decision.
The leak jump-started the intense political reverberations that the high court’s ultimate decision was expected to have in the midterm election year. Already, politicians on both sides of the aisle were seizing on the report to raise funds and energize their supporters on both sides of the issue.
Maine Republican Susan Collins, who supports abortion rights but was a pivotal GOP vote for the confirmations of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, said if the draft reflects the final opinion of the court, “it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.”
Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, told reporters on Capitol Hill that “my confidence in the court has been rocked,” and said her proposal with Collins to legislate abortion rights should be reinvigorated.
Until now, the court has allowed states to regulate but not ban abortion before the point of viability, around 24 weeks.