The Supreme Court is undoing Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that led to the creation of a constitutional right to abortion, according to a leaked draft majority opinion.
The document, obtained by Politico, is for the case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and references the 1992 ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey as well as Roe. The ruling asserts that “the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Justice Samuel Alito said in the opinion, which was circulated within the court.
“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” he added.
A Washington Examiner reporter saw barricades that had been set up outside the Supreme Court on Monday evening. A small gathering of a couple of dozen people began to gather after the news broke, followed by as many as 400-500 people just after 11 p.m. Monday.
“We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey,” the leaked draft ruling says. “And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.”
The leaked draft opinion stems from the case challenging Mississippi’s restrictive abortion law that banned procedures after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The law first took effect in March 2018 and followed a near-immediate lawsuit by the last remaining abortion clinic, Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The draft ruling was authored by Alito and circulated around the high court as early as Feb. 10. A leak such as this is unprecedented, as no draft decision in the contemporary history of the court has been revealed while a case is still pending a ruling. However, the Washington Post released a report later Monday noting the decision in Roe was initially leaked to a Time magazine reporter in January 1973.
Alito notably wrote the court has “long recognized” that stare decisis, the legal principle that courts follow precedent, is “‘not an inexorable command,’ and it ‘is at its weakest when we interpret the Constitution,’” according to the draft opinion.
Political | Process 
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