The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.
rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion. It’s unclear if there have been subsequent changes to the draft.
No draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending. The unprecedented revelation is bound to intensify the debate over what was already the most controversial case on the docket this term.
Alito’s draft opinion rejects the idea that abortion bans reflect the subjugation of women in American society. “Women are not without electoral or political power,” he writes. “The percentage of women who register to vote and cast ballots is consistently higher than the percentage of men who do so.”
The Supreme Court remains one of Washington’s most secretive institutions, priding itself on protecting the confidentiality of its internal deliberations.
“At the Supreme Court, those who know don’t talk, and those who talk don’t know,” Ginsburg was fond of saying.
That tight-lipped reputation has eroded somewhat in recent decades due to a series of books by law clerks, law professors and investigative journalists. Some of these authors clearly had access to draft opinions such as the one obtained by POLITICO, but their books emerged well after the cases in question were resolved.
The justices held their final arguments of the current term on Wednesday. The court has set a series of sessions over the next two months to release rulings in its still-unresolved cases, including the Mississippi abortion case.