5 Things Conservatives Should Know About SCOTUS Draft to Overturn Roe v. Wade
Late on Monday night, left-wing news site Politico perpetrated an unprecedented leak of a major U.S. Supreme Court decision when it published the working draft of a decision that would overturn the landmark 1973 abortion ruling, Roe v. Wade.
In its May 2 article, Politico revealed the text of the draft decision written for the majority by Justice Samuel Alito, who in no uncertain terms exclaimed that “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled.”
Justice Alito went on to say that it is the “opinion of the court” that “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
Alito blasted the twin decisions of Roe and Casey saying, “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
Reports say that Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined Alito in the majority, while Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were in the minority, opposing the ruling. It is likely Chief Justice John Roberts will join the minority, but it is not exactly clear which way he is leaning.
But this leak is a momentous and sad moment in Supreme Court history. Even Politico notes that the leak of this decision is unprecedented.
“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,” the site wrote on Monday.
That point gives us our first of five things you must know about this draft decision.
The Leak is Meant to Intimidate the Court
As Politico noted, this is a disastrous breach of the high court’s security. But it is likely that it was leaked this far ahead of time for one big reason: to intimidate the five justices in the hopes that one or more of them will change their minds and scuttle this overturning of Roe.
Since this is a draft, not the officially filed ruling, any of the nine justices can change their minds on this case. A court ruling is only set in stone once the official ruling is published.
Some reporters are following the assumption that one of Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s clerks leaked the draft, and yet, some have even claimed it was leaked out of the office of one of the conservative justices and meant to force them to solidify their position and not waiver ahead of the filing. Whatever the reason, the Politico story has unleashed a firestorm ahead of a decision that always was going to become just that.
In fact, Alito addressed the concern about the impact the decision will have on public discourse, but he added that such fears should not stop justice.
“We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work,” Alito wrote in the draft. “We do not pretend to know how our political system or society will respond to today’s decision overruling Roe and Casey. And even if we could foresee what will happen, we would have no authority to let that knowledge influence our decision.”
Trump-Hating Christians Now Must Thank Trump
Christians have prayed for and worked to overturn Roe v. Wade since the day the Warren Burger Court pushed the flawed decision onto America. But it took Donald Trump having the opportunity to place three justices on the bench to get this result. All three Trump appointees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — helped buttress the majority decision in this draft.
Many Christians turned up their nose at Donald Trump. They felt he was too flawed as a man to support. But now these same anti-Trump Christians have Donald Trump to thank for torpedoing this abortion ruling that Christians have wanted to be ended for 50 years.
‘Roe’ Has Always Been Bad Law Based on Flawed Historical Analysis
Alito blasted Roe, saying that assessments of it as law have “ranged from the constitutionally irrelevant to the plainly incorrect.” He also wrote in the draft that Roe has had “damaging consequences.”
“The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions,” Alito wrote, adding that even the positions of liberals such as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe had been critical of Roe.
Indeed, the draft also adds two pages of decisions that limited abortion made previous to the 1973 Roe ruling — decisions that liberals at the time even praised.
Alito Blasts ‘Roe’ as a Way to Keep the Black Population Down
As Politico noted, the draft ruling is a “full-throated, unflinching repudiation” of Roe. Alito even points out that many supporters of abortion previous to 1973 saw abortion as a way to keep the black population as low as possible.
Pointing to abortion’s roots in eugenics, Alito writes, “Some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population,” he wrote. “It is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect. A highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are black.”
Alito, though, took pains to say that the court does not intend to cast aspersions on supporters of abortion today, and wrote, “For our part, we do not question the motives of either those who have supported and those who have opposed laws restricting abortion.”
Regardless, Alito is right. Decades ago, abortion was pushed as a way to keep the black population from growing. And it has succeeded mightily in that goal.
Protecting Unlimited Abortion May Not be the Will of the People Anyway
One of the main purposes of this draft decision is to return control over abortion to the states, where the people can have the opportunity to vote on just how much or how little of it they want.
As Alito wrote, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
The left has spent 50 years trying to fool America into thinking that every woman wants abortion protected and that abolition of abortion is somehow an act of subjugation of women. Yet they have spent the same amount of time refusing to let the people vote on the issue. They have wanted the courts to force abortion on America and have wanted to avoid the voting booth at all costs.
If Roe is overturned, that will necessarily mean that the states will once again have control over abortion, and it means that the voters will be able to select leaders that support the majority’s feelings about it.
The left is deathly afraid that women are not a monolithic bloc who will vote to maintain abortion. And they have every reason to fear that, because decades of polling have shown that abortion at will does not have unlimited support among women.
Further, it is known that women often vote more than men. In 2020, Pew Research noted that in every presidential election since 1984, women voters have turned out at a higher rate than men.
But as NPR recently noted, polls have also found that, while there is wide support for abortion during the first trimester, Americans also want restrictions on it after that period.
Finally, the recent restrictions placed on abortion in Texas and other GOP-led states in recent years have terrified the left that had likely even convinced itself that everyone loves abortion except for a small minority of religious-obsessed white men.
Regardless of how abortion levels out in the U.S.A., the high court is correct in saying that the people should have their say via the voting booth and not have the issue mandated by courts. Ending Roe is a good decision based on good law.
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