A majority of the US Supreme Court is in favor of abolishing the nationwide right to abortion. That writes Politicowhich has managed to get hold of a ‘first draft’ of the court ruling in a case brought by the state of Mississippi.
Five of the nine judges would be in favor of this ruling, three against. Chief Justice John Roberts has been unable to tell Politico how he will vote. The newspaper notes that the case will not be definitively decided until the verdict is published, probably before the summer recess. “Judges have sometimes changed their vote in the course of discussions about versions of the ruling.” In 2012, for example, a majority of the court finally decided that the federal health insurance scheme Obamacare was lawful, while a majority in an earlier round had been against it. US media noted Monday evening that the leak of a draft Supreme Court ruling is highly unusual.
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If the court does indeed make this monumental decision, it will put an end to barely fifty years of legal abortion in the United States. The Supreme Court ruled in 1973, in the case Roe v. Wade, that the government had no right to prevent a woman from undergoing abortion treatment. It sparked five decades of conservative efforts to get abortion outlawed. A second matter, Planned Parenthood v. Casey from 1992, was an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable.
Harmful effects
The draft Politico published, circulated on Feb. 10 according to the preamble, is an unmistakable destruction of Roe v. Wade. “Roe was a blatant miss from the start. The reasoning was exceptionally weak and the decision has had damaging effects.” It also states that “the Constitution makes no mention of abortion and the right to do so is not even implicit in its provisions.”
The judge who penned this draft ruling, Samuel Alito, was to be expected. He has never made a secret of his opposition to this precedent that became “the law of the land,” as proponents of abortion rights have always called Roe v. Wade. The fact that Alito now finds a majority on his side is thanks to the exceptional series of three judge appointments that went to former President Donald Trump. And to the Republican Party that blocked a Senate judge nomination in the final year of Democratic President Obama. Trump promised his voters judges who would ban abortion — that promise would be fulfilled with this ruling.
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If the annulment is actually pronounced, the abortion issue should be left to “the people and their elected representatives,” the draft ruling said. Alito notes that “the right to abortion has never been deeply rooted in the history and traditions of this country. On the contrary, there is an unbroken tradition of criminal law banning abortion, with penal provisions and all, from the earliest days of common law down to 1973.”
Biting Controversy
Alito writes that “Roe has certainly not resulted in an end to the division over the abortion issue. On the contrary, Roe has “ignited” a national issue that has been bitterly divided for the past half century. That this Court has not been able to close the debate on this issue should come as no surprise to anyone. This Court cannot lastingly resolve a biting nationwide controversy by simply dictating a settlement and telling the people to make do with it.”
In practice, the ruling would probably mean that the right to abortion will be regulated differently in each of the American states. There is very little chance that the matter can be settled by law at the national level. Mississippi wants to ban all abortions 15 weeks after conception, under the law that the Supreme Court is now reviewing. Some states go even further in limiting the right of choice. It will mean that women who want safe abortion treatment will sometimes have to travel for days, depending on where they live and the closest legal clinic.