The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision protecting women’s rights to abortion, according to a draft majority opinion circulated inside the court, Politico reported. The draft written by Justice Samuel Alito even cites the racist past within abortion rights movement as motivation to overturn the 49-year-old case.
According to the draft, the court would overturn Roe v. Wade’s holding of a federal constitutional right to an abortion. “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” Alito writes. “We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled… It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
In the 98-page long document, lies a footnote where Alito ventures to recognize some early proponents of abortion rights favored eugenics.
“Some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population,” Politico reported. “It is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect. A highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are black.”
However, a 2016 study from Guttmacher Institute reports “No racial or ethnic group made up the majority of abortion patients: Thirty-nine percent were white, 28% were Black, 25% were Hispanic, 6% were Asian or Pacific Islander, and 3% were of some other race or ethnicity.”
After nearly half a century of being in the Conservative movement’s crosshairs, it looks like the Republican party has finally gotten their chance to pull the trigger. While the draft was circulated in early February, Politico reported, the final opinion has not been released.
The Supreme Court is expected to make the final decision in late June.
The leak is a historic first as no draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending. The unprecedented revelation paired with the many states passing legislation for stricter abortion rights further fuels the controversial case.
The Politico report said the justices voting to support Justice Alito’s opinion were Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were reported to be working on dissents.
It was not clear how Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. planned to vote.