Leaks of draft opinions from the Supreme Court are vanishingly rare, but the monumental one leaked last night is deeply disturbing, if not surprising from the right-wing Trumpist Court. Nasty far-right "Justice" Samuel Alito authored a lengthy, harshly worded majority draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, abolishing women's reproductive rights as a national Constitutional right, a ruling that has existed for nearly 50 years as "settled law." The bombshell news came from Politico, which obtained the leaked draft which has been circulated in the Court:
"The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. 'Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,' Alito writes.
'We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,' he writes in the document, labeled as the 'Opinion of the Court.' 'It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.' [snip]
The immediate impact of the ruling as drafted in February would be to end a half-century guarantee of federal constitutional protection of abortion rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion. It’s unclear if there have been subsequent changes to the draft.
No draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending. The unprecedented revelation is bound to intensify the debate over what was already the most controversial case on the docket this term.
The draft opinion offers an extraordinary window into the justices’ deliberations in one of the most consequential cases before the court in the last five decades. Some court-watchers predicted that the conservative majority would slice away at abortion rights without flatly overturning a 49-year-old precedent. The draft shows that the court is looking to reject Roe’s logic and legal protections." (our emphasis)
The anti-choice movement has accelerated since the Malignant Loser took office, with several right-wing states passing restrictions on abortion, from restricting it to under 12 weeks post-conception, to authorizing bounties for private citizens to turn in women and their providers for violations. None have made exceptions for rape or incest.
The draft opinion also suggests a broader, perverse motive: for the right-wing majority to reverse additional "settled law" as a norm in order to undermine decades of precedents and social progress (think Obergefell, Griswold, Social Security, civil rights and voting rights, etc.). The Court is expected to issue it's final ruling in the next couple of months, following internal discussion and possible revision to the draft. But it's clear that the Trump court has done profound damage to women's reproductive rights, and with more to come as precedents are ignored.
