Story at a glance
- Advocacy groups on Tuesday condemned an initial draft abortion opinion that could overturn Roe v. Wade, which has protected reproductive rights for nearly five decades.
- Should the opinion become the majority ruling, Roe v. Wade would be overturned at a time when at least 26 states are poised to quickly enact bans on abortion.
- The ruling would also have “enormous consequences” for LGBTQ+ people and other minority groups in the U.S.
Advocacy groups on Tuesday pushed back against a draft Supreme Court opinion seeking to overturn Roe v. Wade, which has protected the constitutional right to abortion for nearly five decades.
“This is a dark hour for our country,” Annise Parker, the president and CEO of the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, a political action committee, said in a statement. “Such an assault will have dangerous impacts and will cost lives.”
Parker, who was the first openly LGBTQ+ mayor of a major American city when she led Houston from 2010 to 2016, added that the draft opinion — first obtained by POLITICO — would have “enormous consequences” for women and LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. should it become the majority ruling.
The legal rights of LGBTQ+ people and other marginalized groups “often rely on the fundamental right to privacy, which the court majority appears determined to undermine,” Parker said.
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“There’s no sugarcoating this — we’re furious and outraged. But we’re going to keep fighting,” the Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group, wrote Tuesday on Twitter.
The HRC said the initial draft abortion opinion, authored by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, includes “disturbing language” related to other Supreme Court rulings, including Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges — two landmark cases for LGBTQ+ rights.
“Any attempt to overturn either one would be a politicized attack against our community and turn back the hands of time for progress,” the HRC tweeted Tuesday. “We won’t allow for any rolling back of the rights we’ve fought so hard for.”
Alito’s opinion, leaked to POLITICO by an anonymous source inside the court, would overturn Roe v. Wade at a time when at least 26 states are poised to quickly enact bans on abortion, leaving millions of women and others of reproductive age without abortion access.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito writes in the opinion for a case challenging Mississippi’s ban on abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy that has reportedly been circulated inside the court. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
Alito writes in the draft opinion that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.”
“Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences,” Alito’s opinion reads. “And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division.”
In a statement Tuesday morning, Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, called the leaked opinion “horrifying and unprecedented.”
“It confirms our worst fears: that the Supreme Court is prepared to end the constitutional right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade,” she said. “While we have seen the writing on the wall for decades, it is no less devastating, and comes just as anti-abortion rights groups unveil their ultimate plan to ban abortion nationwide.”
If the Supreme Court issues a majority opinion similar to Alito’s draft, “the shift in the tectonic plates of abortion rights will be as significant as any opinion the Court has ever issued,” American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Executive Director Anthony Romero said Tuesday.
“The breach in protocol at the Court pales in comparison to the breach in constitutional freedoms that the Court is charged with upholding,” Romero said. “However the decision ultimately comes down, the ACLU will never stop fighting for a person’s right to choose when and if to have a child.”
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