There has been a Supreme Court leak. The Supreme Court has already voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade
Politico has published the full leaked document that runs to over 98 pages. There is nothing nuanced within it, Roe v Wade is to be completely and totally obliterated via the right-wing Republican extremism unleashed by Trump.
The draft of the document was written by Justice Alito …
“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.”
Impact
The rather obvious impact beyond this being the greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years, is that this step will also totally obliterate confidence in the impartial functioning of the Supreme Court itself.
How will a majority feel about a Supreme Court serving a minority?
If this rolls forward and becomes official, then trigger laws that anticipated this would render access to reproductive rights illegal in 22 states
Caution is Appropriate
How did this leak, who put it out?
I do wonder if the leak was deliberate to test the waters for such a decision. That is just speculation. It is also wholly possible that somebody inside dropped it out because they are as deeply angry about this legal religiously-motivated insanity as many others are.
What is important to also state is that a draft is just that – a draft. Within chambers the justices have a process that involves engaging with each other, and as they do so, views can and do shift.
The leaking of this document will not only shatter confidence in the Supreme Court, but also amongst “the brethren” (the judges) themselves.
Never before has a draft decision been leaked.
Many political norms have been shattered. The leaking of this document is yet one more item hitting the floor and shattering.
The Nine
What we know is that Alito (obviously since it is his draft), and also Clarence (husband of Q-Anon wife) Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett (I like beer, Roe v Wade is safe with me, Kavanaugh, and Amy religious fanatic Coney Barrett, were in favour of obliterating Roe v Wade.
It is not clear where John Roberts stands.
There of course we have the other three – Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. They will be busy working on dissents.
They have the numbers, it is possible for a majority ruling. That would obliterate a rather fundamental constitutional right, and so enables individual states to ban abortion.
What has been clear before this is that they would have a go at Roe v Wade. That has been on the cards for some time now. There had been speculation that they would slice away at it a bit. Nope, they are going for complete and total obliteration.
Reactions
Oh come now, you can already guess them.
Rather a lot of wholly justified anger. This is a total nightmare for women in red states.
There will also be huge political consequences from this. It will also very much play into the midterms. It will force GOP candidates in purple states to either alienate their base or alienate pro-choice moderates. What we can see is that most battleground states are pro-choice by huge margins.
The dog finally got the car – what happens now?
Many on the right will happily attack the leak. As for defending the draft position, perhaps not so much. If you take away abortion rights, but refuse to provide medical care, then your “pro-life” stance is revealed to really be “pro-death”.
This is perhaps also a bat signal to start rolling back a lot of other things as well.