A draft circulated among Supreme Court justices suggests that earlier this year the majority had supported overturning Roe v. Wade (1973), which legalized abortion across the country, according to a report published Monday night in Politician.
The draft is signed by Judge Samuel Alito, a member of the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush.
“Roe was terribly wrong from the start. His reasoning was exceptionally weak and the decision has had detrimental consequences. And far from achieving a national agreement on the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have inflamed the debate and deepened the divide,” the draft reads.
“We hold that Roe and Casey should be overturned,” he adds, referring to the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, who affirmed Roe’s finding of a constitutional right to abortion services, but allowed states to place some restrictions on the practice.
“It’s time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the elected representatives of the people.”
The draft opinion states that there is no constitutional right to abortion services and would allow states to more strictly regulate or ban the procedure altogether.
The Supreme Court has not yet issued a ruling, but the document offers an extraordinary window into the deliberations of the justices in one of the most important cases before the Court during the last five decades.
Some observers predicted that the conservative majority would scrap abortion rights without outright overturning a 49-year precedent. The draft shows that the court seeks to reject the logic and legal protections of Roe.
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A source familiar with the Court’s deliberations said that four of the Republican-appointed justices — Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — had voted with Alito at the conference held between the justices after hearing oral arguments. . And that lineup remains unchanged.
The three Democratic-appointed justices — Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — are working on one or more dissents, according to the source.
It is unclear how Chief Justice John Roberts will vote, whether he will join an already written opinion or write his own.
If Alito’s draft is adopted, it would rule in Mississippi’s favor in the case over that state’s decision to try to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
The draft opinion is 98 pages long, including a 31-page appendix of landmark state abortion laws. It is packed with citations from previous court decisions, books, and other authorities, and includes 118 footnotes.
The release of Alito’s draft majority opinion, a rare violation of the Supreme Court’s secrecy and the tradition surrounding its deliberations, comes as all sides in the abortion debate are preparing for the ruling.
