Biden calls leaked Roe v. Wade draft 'radical,' chief justice vows investigation into how draft reached press
The court confirmed the authenticity of the leaked draft, which was dated to February, and Chief Justice John Roberts said he had ordered an investigation into what he called an “egregious breach of trust.” A court statement emphasized that the draft is not the justices' final word.
“If the court does overturn Roe, it will fall on our nation's elected officials at all levels of government to protect a woman's right to choose,” Biden said. “And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November. At the federal level, we will need more pro-choice Senators and a pro-choice majority in the House to adopt legislation that codifies Roe, which I will work to pass and sign into law.
“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” the draft opinion states. It was signed by Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the court's 6-3 conservative majority who was appointed by former President George W. Bush. The draft opinion strongly suggests that when the justices met in private shortly after arguments in the case on Dec. 1, at least five - all the conservatives except perhaps Chief Justice John Roberts - voted to overrule Roe and Casey, and Alito was assigned the task of writing the court's majority opinion.
The leak jumpstarted the intense political reverberations that the high court's ultimate decision was expected to have in the midterm election year. Already, politicians on both sides of the aisle were seizing on the report to fundraise and energize their supporters on both sides of the issue.
Alito, in the draft, said the court can't predict how the public might react and shouldn't try. “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 opinion, according to Politico. “This puts the decision making back into the hands of the states, which is where it should have always been,” said Mississippi state Rep. Becky Currie.
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