After Politico published the leaked draft of the Supreme Court decision on Roe v Wade, there were reactions all across the political world. Here are some of them.
In addition, there have been some new developments today, which we will list first.
Updates on release of Roe draft
- The Washington Post reports that Chief Justice Roberts is going to open an investigation into how the leak happened. He was also quoted as saying the leaked draft was authentic, but not final: “It does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”
- WaPo also reports that a new WaPo-ABC poll, conducted last week, shows that a majority of Americans say SCOTUS should uphold the Roe decision, by about a 2-to-1 margin (54% to 28%).
- Chuck Schumer has announced that there will be a vote soon to enshrine Roe into law. Pressure is being brought on some of the Republicans who voted for the Republican justices to support this.
- There are multiple reports that if Roe is overturned, Republicans in Congress are already planning how to pass a nationwide ban on abortion once they control both chambers, which they assume will happen in this year’s midterms. Sen. Rand Paul filed a bill in 2021 called the “Life at Conception Act,” that would define “personhood” and the accompanying Constitutional rights as beginning with fertilized eggs.
Reactions to the leaked document and the possible overturn of Roe
President Biden: “I believe that a woman’s right to choose is fundamental, Roe has been the law of the land for almost fifty years, and basic fairness and the stability of our law demand that it not be overturned.
“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. And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November,” Biden said in the statement. “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.”
Susan Collins: “If this leaked draft opinion is the final decision and this reporting is accurate, it would be completely inconsistent with what Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanaugh said in their hearings and in our meetings in my office.”
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi (joint statement): “If the report is accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years — not just on women but on all Americans. … Several of these conservative Justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation — all at the expense of tens of millions of women who could soon be stripped of their bodily autonomy and the constitutional rights they’ve relied on for half a century.”
Charles Booker, candidate for U.S. Senate: “This draft opinion confirms our worst fears. In a radical act of government overreach, the conservative majority of the United States Supreme Court has all but confirmed that it intends to overturn decades of settled legal precedent, which would deny millions of Americans their agency, humanity, life-saving healthcare, and reproductive freedom.
“ ... We can’t underestimate the urgency of this moment. If action isn’t taken soon, abortion access will disappear all across the country — including in Kentucky, where we are already fighting a law that would effectively ban abortions in our Commonwealth.
“The United States Supreme Court has tacitly agreed that the death of millions of women — our daughters, our mothers, our loved ones — is not too high a cost to pay to advance their radical, dangerous, and shameful political agenda. It is absolutely critical that the Senate Majority show the leadership to abolish the filibuster now, and codify the protections of Roe v. Wade into law.”
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