Shock: Supreme Court Ready to Overturn 50 Years of Precedent

A draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito shows that the Supreme Court is preparing to take away women's constitutional rights to abortion, essentially nullifying 50 years' of established precedent established by the landmark Roe v. Wade, which Alito called “egregiously wrong from the start.” The document, obtained by Politico, spans 98 pages and was apparently drafted in February. It marks an unprecedented leak for the nation’s highest court. Per Politico, “no draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending.”

A source told Politico that Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, all voted in agreement with Alito in a conference following oral arguments in December.  If that is true, that would mean the Kavanaugh outright lied in his cofirmation, when he told the Senate that Roe was established precedent. Conservative justices Amy Coney Barrett, and Neil Gorsuch described Roe v. Wade as settled law in their confirmation hearings and suggested they would respect precedent. 

The shocking decision by the conservative court would uphold a Mississippi  State law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest.  13 other states have so-called trigger laws that would automatically ban practically all abortions if SCOTUS overturns Roe.Those states are: Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming.

Alito's draft opinion explicitly criticizes Lawrence v. Texas (legalizing sodomy) and Obergefell v. Hodges (legalizing same-sex marriage). He says that, like abortion, these decisions protect phony rights that are not "deeply rooted in history."  Requiring civil rights to be “deeply rooted in history” is a great way to say “if you didn’t always have civil rights, then you should never have them.”

Alito's reasoning is also based partly on the fact that the word "abortion" doesn't appear in the Constitution, as he writes: "The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision....” 

The 1973 Supreme Court based its Roe decision in part on the 1965 decision in the case Griswold v. Connecticut which struck down a law banning the use of birth control. In that decision, the Court said that the due process liberty clause included a right to privacy. So if Roe v. Wade is "wrong", then Griswold v. Connecticut presumably is invalid as well, because the word "contraception" or "birth control" doesn't appear in the Constitution either.  As Rep. Jamie Raskin said last night, "This would appear to be an invitation to have Handmaid's Tale-type anti-feminist regulation and legislation all over the country."