A majority of Supreme Court justices have reportedly agreed to vote for a draft judicial opinion that would strike down Roe vs. Wade, a ruling that would strike down a landmark decision protecting abortion rights and usher in a new era of state-level anti-choice laws.
Politico has obtained an initial draft majority opinion — penned by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito — that reportedly has the support of four other conservative justices. Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh all reportedly voted in concurrence with Alito after oral arguments in December. Together, the five justices have the majority needed to overturn Roe, which since 1973 has been the principal federal bulwark protecting abortion rights.
Related Stories
Florida Becomes the Third Red State to Ban Abortion in the Last … Three Days
Oklahoma Just Made It a Felony to Perform an Abortion
Related Stories
The Private Lives of Liza Minnelli (The Rainbow Ends Here)
Black Sabbath on the Making of 'Vol. 4': 'It Was Absolute Pandemonium'
The document is a draft and the votes are not final. As Politico notes: “Justices can and sometimes do change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading.”
But the 98-page draft is unequivocally clear that the Supreme Court should not have made the broad ruling protecting abortion rights. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes. “Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
Republican lawmakers across the country have passed — or are preparing to pass — laws that criminalize, invalidate, or radically limit a woman’s right to choose whether or not to carry a pregnancy to term. Those laws for decades have been struck down in the federal judiciary, but with Roe gone, abortion rights and access for millions of women in the United States would quickly be sharply curtailed, if not eliminated altogether.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
Source: Read Full Article