The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.
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.”
Deliberations on controversial cases have in the past been fluid. Justices can and sometimes do change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading, sometimes until just days before a decision is unveiled. The court’s holding will not be final until it is published, likely in the next two months.
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.
Read the rest here.
Obviously this is not a final opinion. But I have no reason to believe it is not authentic. POLITICO is a highly reputable news site and this must be acknowledged as one of the great "scoops" in the history of journalism.
Glory to God!
Thank God Trump was elected in 2016.
ReplyDeleteOnly Biden's incredible, undeniable, historically unprecedented popularity in a totally legitimate, above-board and honest election stopped a second term of conservative judicial appointments.
I have always given Trump credit for his judicial appointments. As for the rest, my opinions on the election and the efforts to steal it (by Trump and his followers) are well known and I'm not going down that particular rabbit hole here. Assuming the decision holds, it will obviously redefine the midterm elections. My guess is that every poll regarding the November elections published up to now, just became obsolete.
ReplyDelete