Yesterday evening, Politico published a leaked US Supreme Court draft opinion authored by Samuel Alito overturning the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade and granting states the power to criminalize abortion. The existence of a “draft opinion” means a majority of the court has already voted on the outcome of the case and is merely finalizing the language.
“We hold that Roe…must be overruled,” the draft opinion reads.
The decision is an assault on the democratic rights of the entire population, and particularly on tens of millions of working class women who will not be able to travel for necessary medical procedures. It raises the likelihood that the court will move to abolish gay marriage, move to further end the separation of church and state, and eviscerate a broad range of basic democratic and civil rights won through decades of social struggle.
The decision (in a case named Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization) is an unlawful ruling by an illegitimate court and should be treated as such. All but one judge ruling with the majority was appointed by a president who lost the popular vote. Two of the Supreme Court’s nine justices were appointed by George W. Bush, who lost the 2000 election outright (Alito and John Roberts). One justice, Clarence Thomas, is married to an organizer of the January 6 coup to overturn the Constitution, and three Justices (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) were appointed by Donald Trump, who led that coup attempt.
The decision overturning Roe v. Wade evidently received votes from five or six of the justices. It is not known whether Roberts will support the majority, write a concurring opinion, or dissent with the court’s Democratic Party-appointed rump. His vote is not necessary to the majority.
The content of the decision is politically, legally and morally abhorrent.
The draft opinion calls Roe “egregiously wrong” and compares it to the 1896 decision Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation of railroad dining cars under the pseudo-legal “separate but equal” doctrine. In a footnote, Alito’s decision claims that proponents of abortion are eugenicists who are “motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population.”
The decision is an open attack on the population of the United States and is thoroughly imbued with the oligarchic principle. According to the Supreme Court, the interests of masses of people are of no consequence whatsoever:
“We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work,” the opinion states.
Elsewhere, the decision reads, “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” In reality, 60 percent of Americans support abortion rights, the highest percentage in US history.
The Supreme Court’s legal rationale is that because the word “abortion” was not mentioned in the Constitution, there can be no right to abortion. This paves the way for a massive and unprecedented assault on all democratic rights not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution. Other “unenumerated rights” include the right to vote, the right to travel, the right to privacy, and the right to the presumption of innocence.
The Supreme Court is also paving the way for overturning past decisions clarifying and establishing fundamental rights, the importance of which the framers could not have recognized in the society of the 1780s and 1790s. The decision states, “For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each state was permitted to address [abortion] in accordance with the views of its citizens. Then, in 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade.”
By this token, very little stops today’s court from reversing almost all of the decisions of the court’s brief liberal period of the 1950s to early 1970s, culminating in Roe. This includes the right to a public defender (Gideon v. Wainwright), the right of arrestees to hear their constitutional rights read to them upon arrest (Miranda v. Arizona), the abolition of anti-miscegenation laws (Loving v. Virginia), and the ban on mandatory prayer in public schools (Engel v. Vitale).
The decision even opens the door to overturning the court’s prior decision holding that the Equal Protection Clause applies not only to the actions of the federal government, but also to the governments of the states (Bolling v. Sharpe). In fact, the content of Alito’s decision undermines his attempt to equate Roe v. Wade with Plessy v. Ferguson since the text of the Constitution makes no reference to barring racial segregation either.
Blame for the fact that the Supreme Court has come to be dominated by a gang of bigots and arch-reactionaries falls squarely at the feet of the Democratic Party. Democrats capitulated to Republicans when the latter stole the 2000 election and rubber-stamped it with the Supreme Court’s illegitimate decision in Bush v. Gore, which declared that the population does not have the right to vote for president.
For the last half century, the Democrats have refused to oppose the Republicans as the latter have legitimized all forms of backwardness and religious obscurantism.
Most recently, in 2017, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that Democrats would not defend the right to abortion for fear of alienating the far right. She said the issue would not be a “litmus test” for Democrats, adding:
“I grew up Nancy D’Alesandro, in Baltimore, Maryland; in Little Italy; in a very devout Catholic family; fiercely patriotic; proud of our town and heritage, and staunchly Democratic. Most of those people—my family, extended family—are not pro-choice. You think I’m kicking them out of the Democratic Party?”
The Democratic Party is as feckless in defending democratic rights as it is ruthless in prosecuting the interests of American imperialism.
The Supreme Court decision also explodes the lie that the US government’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is being fought for the sake of “democracy.” Russia’s right-wing abortion laws allow legal abortions only in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, but even this reactionary standard is now more liberal than many American states inhabited by tens of millions of people.
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'Time to Take to the Streets': Mobilizations Planned as Supreme Court Targets Roe
Abortion rights advocates geared up to mobilize in the nation's capital and across the United States on Tuesday following the leak of a draft decision signaling that the Supreme Court's right-wing majority is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.While the decision outlined in the draft opinion—authored by Justice Samuel Alito—is not yet final, it would strike a devastating blow to reproductive rights in large swaths of the U.S. Experts at the Guttmacher Institute have estimated that if the landmark 1973 decision is overturned, 26 states are "certain or likely" to completely outlaw abortion.
At least 13 states—including Arkansas, Kentucky, Utah, and Louisiana—currently have in place so-called "trigger laws" that would ban abortion in all or most cases automatically if the Supreme Court ends Roe.
The high court's final ruling in the closely watched case, which is centered on an abortion ban in Mississippi, is expected within the next two months.
"We're mobilizing," Shaunna Thomas, co-founder of UltraViolet, tweeted in the wake of Politico's report on the draft, which set off widespread outrage and spurred flash protests outside the Supreme Court Monday night.
"Be at SCOTUS or any federal courthouse tomorrow at 5 pm," Thomas wrote late Monday. "The leaked draft decision overturning Roe has confirmed everything we knew about this court's intentions and it is giving us an opportunity to show them how ungovernable we will be if they follow through."
An end to Roe is an outcome that right-wing forces in the U.S., backed by corporate power and cash, have been working toward for decades—and they appear prepared to take full advantage should the high court ultimately rule in their favor.
Citing a person familiar with the court's deliberations, Politico revealed that "four of the other Republican-appointed justices—Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—had voted with Alito in the conference held among the justices after hearing oral arguments in December, and that line-up remains unchanged as of this week."
Hours before Alito's draft opinion was made public, the Washington Post reported that "leading anti-abortion groups and their allies in Congress have been meeting behind the scenes to plan a national strategy that would kick in if the Supreme Court rolls back abortion rights this summer, including a push for a strict nationwide ban on the procedure if Republicans retake power in Washington."
"The effort, activists say, is designed to bring a fight that has been playing out largely in the courts and state legislatures to the national political stage—rallying conservatives around the issue in the midterms and pressuring potential 2024 GOP presidential candidates to take a stand," the Post noted.
Democratic attempts to enshrine Roe into federal law, meanwhile, have foundered as Senate Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) remain opposed to legislation that would do so. In late April, Manchin joined the unified GOP in filibustering the House-passed Women's Health Protection Act (WHPA), refusing to even allow a vote on the measure itself.
"As one of the 1 in 4 women in this country who have chosen to have an abortion, I am outraged and disgusted by the reported draft SCOTUS opinion," Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said late Monday.
"People should take to the streets across the country," Jayapal added. "Right now, the Senate can pass an exception to the filibuster and codify Roe v. Wade. This is the most dramatic setback for women's rights in decades."
Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, echoed that warning in a statement.
"If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, it will be an unjustified, unprecedented stripping away of a guaranteed right that has been in place for nearly five decades," said Northrup. "It would represent the most damaging setback to the rights of women in the history of our country."
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PSL Statement: Supreme Court declares war on women and abortion rights — Take to the streets!
The Supreme court has declared war against women and our basic rights to control our own bodies. Now is the time to fight back. Millions of people going into the streets would make it clear that without justice there can be no peace.
A heroic individual has leaked to the public the decision by the Supreme Court to end abortion rights by overturning the Roe v Wade decision, and the later Casey decision.
Neither the church nor the state has the right to tell women what we can do with our own bodies.
The Supreme Court has demonstrated throughout history that it is an enemy of democracy and an enemy of people’s rights. It upheld slavery as a legal institution until the Civil War ended it. It made apartheid and segregation the law of the land in 1896 and today it is attempting to end abortion rights that were the consequence of the mass movement of millions of women and their allies in the 1960s and early 1970s. The Supreme Court today is also taking back voting rights for Black Americans, human rights for immigrants, and union rights for workers. Until the mass movement of the LGBTQ community forced the Supreme Court to change, it denied marriage equality and other basic rights.
The Supreme Court should be abolished. Nine unelected judges, appointed for lifetime terms, should not have the discretion to eviscerate the rights of hundreds of millions of people in the United States. This institution makes a mockery out of the notion of a democratic society.
Now is the time to fight back. Only a mass movement of the people can save abortion rights. Take to the streets throughout the United States.
Background to the decision
Amidst a barrage of attacks on women’s reproductive rights, the Supreme Court intends to overturn Roe v Wade.
This decision has not come without forewarning. States have continuously attacked reproductive rights in the leadup to this vote, including through the passage of the infamous Texas SB 8 bill. For decades, right wing forces have brought one unconscionable abortion ban after another hoping to provoke the overturning of abortion rights.
This landmark decision has been looming in the horizon with enough time for the Democratic Party, enjoying majority control of both the Senate and the House, to have passed the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA). The passage of the WHPA would have legalized abortion once and for all, guaranteeing the right to choose for women in the United States.
The draft opinion, which digs deep into sexist and racist ideology, goes on to describe abortion, a crucial component to women’s healthcare, as a “rancorous national controversy.” This callous treatment of an often life-saving healthcare procedure is outrageous!
In reality, the majority of Americans have consistently supported Roe v Wade. In fact, a recent 2022 poll found that 72% of respondents were opposed to overturning the ruling. The US government is well aware of this fact, evidenced by the fence wall that is being built around the Supreme Court just as it prepares for all out war on women’s rights. These statistics shed a harsh light on the fact that despite their wishes, the essential reproductive rights for 166 million women in the United States are in the hands of 9 undemocratically appointed Supreme Court Justices, 6 of whom are men.
This is a walkout moment. It is clear that there is popular support for women’s right to choose, and it is even more clear that we will never be able to secure this right unless we take to the streets. The elitist Supreme Court is threatening a war on women’s rights and the only force capable of putting a stop to them is the people of the United States mobilizing and organizing to defend our rights.
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