Is SCOTUS really going to quash Roe v Wade?

May 4, 2022 by Jill

by Michael Cook, MercatorNet:

The news service Politico claims that the Supreme Court is going to repudiate its 1973 ruling.

Pro-life campaigners in the United States are singing Alleluias after a leak from the Supreme Court. According to Politico, a majority of the nine-justice bench has voted to overturn Roe v Wade.

If true, 49 years of legal abortion, effectively on-demand in most states, belong to the past. From now on, abortion battles will be fought state by state.

Politico journalists Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward claim that they have obtained a copy of a draft majority decision in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization written by Justice Samuel Alito. It is, they write, “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.”

Is the leak authentic? The journalists insist that it is. They say that they “received a copy of the draft opinion from a person familiar with the court’s proceedings in the Mississippi case along with other details supporting the authenticity of the document.”

It’s too early for celebrations, though. It will be another couple of months before the judgement is handed down. As the authors of the scoop point out, there is no reason why the justices cannot change their minds:

Read here

Read also: Statement on the leaked Alito draft opinion in Dobbs by Robert George, Mirror of Justice