Chief Justice John G. Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed in a statement Tuesday that the leaked majority draft opinion that would strike down Roe v. Wade is authentic.
“This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here,” he said in the statement. “I have directed the Marshal of the Court to launch an investigation into the source of the leak.”
According to POLITICO – which published the leak – the Supreme Court opinion was drafted in February by Justice Samuel Alito and its leak marks the first time in the modern history of the court that a draft decision has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending.
However, the result in Roe v. Wade was leaked by a Supreme Court clerk to a Time magazine reporter in January 1973 hours before the decision was announced, according to The Washington Post.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” said the draft opinion referencing Roe v. Wade, a 1973 ruling that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to choose to terminate her pregnancy and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld Roe v. Wade in 1992. Alito argues in the 98-page opinion that abortion laws should be decided on a state-by-state basis.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” he said in the draft, which would rule in favor of Mississippi in the state’s attempt to ban most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
A person familiar with the court’s deliberations cited by POLITICO said that four of the other Republican-appointed justices – Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – fall in line with Alito on the subject.
Former President Donald Trump appointed three of the justices – Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett – during just his one term in office. Thomas has recently been criticized for his wife Ginny Thomas’ ties to the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol while Congress attempted to confirm election results for Biden, which was fueled by unsupported claims of election fraud Trump continues to promote.
Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, the court’s three liberal-leaning justices, are working on one or more dissents, according to the person cited by POLITICO. Roberts position was unclear as of Monday night, said the outlet.
Since it is a draft document, there is a possibility that it could change.
“This is a dark and disturbing morning for America,” said Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) Tuesday morning. “If this report is accurate, the Supreme Court is posed to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years, not just on women, but on all Americans,” said Schumer of the majority opinion before the court’s confirmation. “Under this decision, our children will have less rights than their parents.”
Schumer said that the Senate intends to hold a vote to codify the right to abortion in law as soon as possible.
“A vote on this legislation is not an abstract exercise,” he said, adding that “every American is going to see on which side every Senator stands.”
Other Democrat lawmakers went to Twitter to call for a permanent abortion law and noted that the filibuster – Senate rules that allow the minority party to block everything the majority party wants to do by stretching out debate – should be ended in order to pass the law quickly.
According to The Hill, Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia said Tuesday that he would support keeping the filibuster.
The leak also garnered comments from President Joe Biden. He said that his administration backs Roe v. Wade and urged voters to elect pro-choice candidates in upcoming elections, especially if the document is genuine.
Indeed, polls routinely show that Americans support abortion rights. For example, a Pew Research Center poll conducted a year ago found that nearly 60% of Americans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Another Pew Research Center study found that poll respondents in most states think abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Since 1976, there has not been a year where Gallup polls found that more people thought abortions should be illegal in any circumstance compared to people who thought it should be legal in any circumstance. Every year, most Gallup poll respondents said they thought there should be at least some abortion access.
This year, a CNN poll found that most Americans did not want the court to overturn Roe v. Wade. After the leak was published, protesters began gathering at the Supreme Court. As of Tuesday, the court was closed to the public and barricades were up, NBC News reported.
Furthermore, an Audacy investigation conducted last year found that strict abortion laws don’t even line up with fewer abortions in many states.
However, some Republican politicians expressed support for Alito’s argument, including Dr. Mehmet Oz, a celebrity doctor running for a Pennsylvania Senate seat with Trump’s support.
“The Court is right,” he said in a tweet. “Roe was wrongly decided. Abortion laws should be left up to the American people and their elected representatives. I look forward to supporting pro-life legislation that saves innocent lives in the U.S. Senate.”
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also tweeted about her pro-life stance Tuesday.
According to Slate, the final version of the draft opinion would likely be announced in June. If the five justices maintain their votes to strike down “the immediate consequence is that abortion would become illegal in about half of all U.S. states,” said the outlet, which offered theories about who might have leaked the draft.
Even with the country’s current access to abortions, the U.S. has one of the highest maternal mortality rates among developed nations, according to Vice President Kamala Harris.
Apart from drastically changing abortion access in the nation, others are concerned that decision may impact other rights in the U.S., including LGBTQ marriage rights, according to an opinion piece in The Daily Beast.
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