US Supreme Court Shows No Signs of Changing Course on Leaked Draft Anti-Abortion Decision - Report
19:08 GMT 11.05.2022 (Updated: 13:29 GMT 06.08.2022)
© AP Photo / Alex Brandon
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Despite more than a week of mass outrage and protests, including outside Supreme Court justices’ homes, the high court shows no indication it is changing course on a draft decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade, a 1973 case in which the court legalized abortion.
As the nine Supreme Court justices prepare to convene again for the first time since the press published a draft decision leaked to them by an unknown source, that draft penned by Justice Samuel Alito remains the only one circulating among the justices, according to Politico.
According to the high court’s official schedule, the justice will convene in conference on Thursday, May 12, for the first time since May 2. The closed-door meeting will see the justices speak frankly and alone about recently-heard oral arguments. However, the events of the previous two weeks are likely to also be a subject of conversation.
“This is the most serious assault on the court, perhaps from within, that the Supreme Court’s ever experienced,” a person close to the court’s conservatives told Politico. “It’s an understatement to say they are heavily, heavily burdened by this.”
Chief Justice John Roberts said he had begun a probe to hunt down the source of the leak, calling it a “betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations.”
Politico was first to publish the draft majority opinion written by Alito - the first time such a leak has occurred at the high court in living memory. Six conservative justices sit on the court, outnumbering the three liberal justices by two-to-one, although only Alito’s name appeared on the document and no dissenting opinion has been similarly leaked.
In the document, Alito argues that “a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation’s history and traditions,” calling the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision “egregiously wrong from the start.” The 1973 ruling found that a woman’s right to an abortion was protected under the aegis of her right to privacy, and laid out a framework for legal regulation of abortion that barred restrictions on early-term abortions.
The court’s opinion is in response to arguments heard in a December 2021 case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the Mississippi government directly asked the high court to consider the validity of the Roe decision. The Magnolia State is just one of several Republican-dominated states to pass laws that restrict abortion access beyond what Roe allows, including Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona.
The court’s term ends in June, when the decision is expected to be formally published, and could change by that time.
Within hours of the leaked document being published, protesters gathered outside the high court in Washington, DC, demanding the court reverse course. Further protests continued through the weekend, spreading to more than 30 cities across the United States. Protesters demanded Democrats take action in Congress, but also indicted them for failing to do so in the 49 years since the Roe decision.
On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) tried to rally his party’s lawmakers in the Senate to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, a bill that would codify the text of Roe into US federal law. The chamber tried to vote on the bill’s passage in March, but it was tabled after Democrats failed to gather enough votes to bring it to a floor vote. The bill passed the House last September.
However, Schumer made clear over the weekend that the Wednesday vote was not so much a realistic attempt to pass the bill as it was to put senators on the record about abortion during a time that political tensions are very high and elections are just months away.
Every American will see how every senator stands," Schumer told reporters on Sunday. He added that Republicans "can't duck it anymore. Republicans have tried to duck it."
A poll published by ABC News and the Washington Post last week showed majority support for abortion’s legality and just 27% of respondents said they thought the Roe decision should be overturned, regardless of whether or not they personally supported abortion.
