Edited by: TJVNews.com

President Joe Biden on Tuesday blasted what he termed a “radical” Supreme Court draft opinion that would vacate the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling that has stood for a half century, according to an AP report. He also issued a warning that such other rights including same-sex marriage and birth control are at risk of being overturned if the court follows through.

Across the nation, Americans grappled with what might come next as the Democratic-controlled Congress and White House both vowed to try to blunt the impact of such a ruling, according to the AP report. Their prospects, however, looked dismal.

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,” as was reported by the AP.  A court statement emphasized that the draft is not the justices’ final word.

The AP reported that opinions often change in ways big and small in the drafting process, and a final ruling has not been expected until the end of the court’s term in late June or early July.

A decision to overrule Roe would have sweeping ramifications, leading to abortion bans in roughly half the states, sparking new efforts in Democratic-leaning states to protect access to abortion, and potentially reshaping the contours of this year’s hotly contested midterm elections, as was reported by the AP.

The draft was published by the news outlet Politico late Monday.

Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One, the AP reported that Biden said he hoped the draft wouldn’t be finalized by justices, contending it reflects a “fundamental shift in American jurisprudence” that threatens “other basic rights” like access to birth control and marriage.

“If this decision holds, it’s really quite a radical decision,” he added.

“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, according to the AP report.  He added: “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.”

Though past efforts have failed, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he intended to hold a vote.

“This is as urgent and real as it gets,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Tuesday, as was reported by the AP. “Every American is going to see on which side every senator stands.”

Leaders in New York and California rolled out the welcome mat to their states for women seeking abortions, and other Democratic states moved to protect access to abortion in their laws.

The AP reported that the court’s ruling would be most acutely felt by women who don’t have the means or ability to travel from states that have or stand poised to pass stiff abortion restrictions or outright bans.

Whatever the outcome, the Politico report late Monday represented an extremely rare breach of the court’s secretive deliberation process, and on a case of monumental importance, as was reported by the AP.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” the draft opinion states. The AP reported that 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 document was labeled a “1st Draft” of the “Opinion of the Court” in a case challenging Mississippi’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks. AP reported that the draft opinion in effect states there is no constitutional right to abortion services. It would allow individual states to more heavily regulate or outright ban the procedure.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” it states, referencing the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey that affirmed Roe’s finding of a constitutional right to abortion services but allowed states to place some constraints on the practice. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

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, according to the AP report.

Votes and opinions in a case aren’t final until a decision is announced or, in a change wrought by the coronavirus pandemic, posted on the court’s website.

Politico said only that it received “a copy of the draft opinion from a person familiar with the court’s proceedings in the Mississippi case along with other details supporting the authenticity of the document,” as was reported by the AP.

The report comes amid a legislative push to restrict abortion in several Republican-led states — Oklahoma being the most recent — even before the court issues its decision. The AP reported that critics of those measures have said low-income and minority women will disproportionately bear the burden of the new restrictions.

Concerning the possible overturning of Roe by the Supreme Court, veteran feminist activist, clinical psychologist, prolific author and international lecturer, Dr. Phyllis Chesler told the Jewish Voice, “This whole thing is surreal. I am concerned not only about the glaring inequities that will result if abortion rights are thrown back to the states to decide, but about the leak on the court’s draft opinion.”

As a long-time proponent of a woman’s right to protect her bodily integrity and to choose whether she bears a child, Dr. Chesler said, “the moment that Roe became the law of the land in 1973, the zealous anti-abortion activists launched a frenzied campaign to have the court vacate this ruling, and they are still at it with as much zeal as when they began.”

She added: “What I don’t understand is the real motivation behind these anti-abortion activists. They know that a great deal of those who have abortions are poor and minority women who are experiencing extraordinary financial challenges. Many live well below the poverty line and simply cannot afford to raise a child. I don’t see any of these anti-abortion ideologues reaching into their own pockets to help support these children. What about rape and incest? What about the need for a medical abortion in order to save the mother’s life?”

Studies have indicated that children born to women who are put up for adoption or sent to live in a foster home are often brutally abused, severely neglected and/or sexually molested. On this matter, Dr. Chesler said, “The trauma of separating a birth mother from her child is something that affects everyone concerned. For a child to grow up in an institution without the nurturing of a mother leads to multiple social/psychological problems for the child that last a lifetime.”

Dr. Chesler recalls her experiences in assisting women gain access to abortion services. “In 1968, before anyone heard of Roe, I was helping women who had no other alternatives other than to have an abortion. I helped in getting them professional services rather than having them undergo life threatening back-alley abortions.”

Referencing Jewish legal dictums, Dr. Chesler said, “Abortion is not prohibited in halacha (Jewish law). The life of the mother always takes precedence as it pertains to abortion and there are other factors that come in to play as well concerning a woman’s right to choose.”

Speaking of the political and cultural turmoil that may grip the nation because of this controversial and hotly debated issue, Dr. Chesler ruefully observed, “I suspect that the decision to overturn Roe will still allow each state to decide it’s own law. Thus, we are looking at an American future which will consist of free states and slave states. We are also looking at a possible Civil War as well. Women who live in abject poverty in slave states will not be able to afford to travel to a free state.

She added that the issue of abortions performed legally is not going away anytime soon. “Women will always need and obtain abortions. The question is whether those abortions will be legal. As before, most illegal abortions will be dangerous and painful and many women will die, especially poor women, especially women of color. The Supreme Court knows this.”

 

Also weighing in on this issue is Martha Shelley; feminist activist, acclaimed poet and author of an upcoming memoir about her life on the front lines of the gay rights movement and other social justice causes.

From her home in Portland, Oregon, Ms. Shelley told the Jewish Voice, “ In 1970, three years before Roe v. Wade, abortion became legal in New York. While it was illegal elsewhere, I worked with a group helping women who came from other states and from Canada to obtain the procedure.”

She observed that, “many op-ed columnists and commenting readers recall the days of illegal abortions, when women often died or suffered long-term consequences to their health. In addition, they observe that the “Right to Life” activists and politicians fail to support legislation that would offer financial help for women struggling to support their children, either wanted or unwanted—and in fact often oppose such legislation.”

 

Ms. Shelley notes that, “These arguments miss the point. Those who argue that the real intent of the anti-abortion crowd is to control women’s bodies are closer to the mark. What they miss, however, is the underlying misogyny, the actual hatred of women that runs through American culture.”

 

As someone who has her finger on the pulse of the nation in terms of gender bias, Ms. Shelley added, “I have met anti-abortion people who genuinely believed the propaganda put forth by their churches, but were open to listening to other opinions. Others, the ones who scream epithets at women going to a Planned Parenthood clinic for birth control, are unreachable. The cynics and proto-fascist politicians and “Justices” know what they’re doing, but all they care about is power.”

 

“All of us, however, were born and raised in an atmosphere of misogyny. We only begin to notice how polluted the air is when someone points it out to us—and only when we aren’t desperate to maintain whatever advantages we have in the hierarchies of cruelty.”

 

The AP reported that politicians on both sides of the aisle were seizing on the report to fundraise and energize their supporters on both sides of this hotly debated issue.

Democrats contended that several conservative justices misled senators about their feelings.

Polling shows 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. In general, AP-NORC polling finds a majority of the public favors abortion being legal in most or all cases.

Outside of the Supreme Court building, the AP reported that anti-abortion rights protestors gathered and carried signs that said “Ignore Roe” and “In God We Trust” while their pro-abortion-rights counterparts held placards declaring “Bans off our Bodies” and “Impeach Kavanaugh. Crowds were expected to build as the day wore on.

Outside Washington, the reaction among conservatives was muted, ranging from cautious celebration over the anticipated ruling to sharp criticism of the source of the leaked draft, according to the AP report.

“We will let the Supreme Court speak for itself and wait for the court’s official opinion,” Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch said in a statement.

Until now, the court has allowed states to regulate but not ban abortion before the point of viability, around 24 weeks.

Twenty-six states are certain or likely to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned, according to the pro-abortion rights think tank the Guttmacher Institute. Of those, the AP reported that 22 states already have total or near-total bans on the books that are currently blocked by Roe, aside from Texas. The Texas law banning it after six weeks has been allowed to go into effect by the Supreme Court due to its unusual civil enforcement structure. Four more states are considered likely to quickly pass bans if Roe is overturned.

Sixteen states and the District of Columbia have protected access to abortion in state law, as was reported by the AP.

The Supreme Court justices generally spend May and June finishing their writing in cases that have been argued and then issuing the remaining opinions before going on a summer break. On the court’s calendar, the next day opinions might normally be expected is May 16.

The AP reported that some states had already been preparing for the potential that the high court could weaken or overturn Roe. But the bombshell leak of the draft opinion appeared to accelerate that drive Tuesday, setting the country on course for an even more jumbled landscape of abortion rights and new battles over other reproductive rights, all before the court even issues a ruling.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, said on Twitter she plans to immediately call a special legislative session “to save lives” if Roe is overturned, according to the AP report. The state already has a so-called trigger law that would make abortion illegal if that happens and Noem’s office declined to say why a special session would be necessary. Her spokesman, Ian Fury, said the tweet, “speaks for itself.”

In addition to South Dakota, 12 other states have trigger laws that would immediately ban abortion if Roe is overturned and would presumably go into effect if the Supreme Court majority votes for the draft in late June or early July, as was reported by the AP.

In Oklahoma, the AP reported that Republican House Speaker Charles McCall declared Tuesday that “decades of steadfast prayer and unwavering legislative efforts to protect the lives of the unborn are finally on the doorsteps of success.”

“For close to 50 years, the silent cries of the millions who lost their lives before even having a chance to live have been heard through the voices of those of us fighting for their rights,” McCall said. “The pro-life movement won, securing those yet unborn the future and promise that comes with being born in the United States of America.”  (Sources: AP) – Additional reporting by: Fern Sidman