U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has written a draft ruling overturning Roe v. Wade and it commands a majority on the court, reports Politico. It is the only draft Supreme Court ruling leaked to the public in modern history.
The draft opinion is a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right. "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start," Alito writes.
"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."
The draft ruling ends 50 years of federally-protected abortion rights. Politico reports that it is far from the careful, limited ruling many court-watchers expected, instead clearly overturning precedent and offering "caustic rhetorical flourishes" attacking the idea that abortion could be a constitutionally protected right.
