Roe vs Wade vs the SC?

guestposter

May 3

I can't work out is this a surprise or not? The news that:

The US supreme court has provisionally voted to overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationwide in America, according to a draft opinion reported on by Politico.

In what appeared to be a stunning and unprecedented leak, Politico said on Monday evening it had obtained an initial majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated in the court on 10 February.

The opinion strikes down Roe v Wade, the court's 1973 ruling that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion, and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v Casey – that largely upheld that right.

That this would occur, if accurate, at a time when:

Polling has shown that relatively few Americans want to see Roe overturned. In 2020, AP VoteCast found that 69% of voters in the presidential election said the supreme court should leave the Roe v Wade decision as is; just 29% said the court should overturn the decision.

But even beyond that, given the SC seems impervious to such concerns, or this SC at least, where do matters proceed? And added to that is the question of how this works politically in terms of mobilising those in opposition to this both at local, State and national level inside the US? And of course there's the mid-terms too.

So no, not a surprise, however deeply unwelcome.

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