Joe Biden vows to fight for abortion rights after Supreme Court leak

Joe Biden has condemned as ‘way overboard’ a leaked Supreme Court ruling that could overturn women’s right to an abortion.

Joe Biden has vowed to defend abortion rights. Picture: AFP.

President Joe Biden has condemned as “radical” and “way overboard” a leaked Supreme Court judgment that could overturn women’s right to have an abortion in the US, as Democrats seize on the controversial draft ruling to rally support for the midterm elections.

Mr Biden urged Democrats “at all levels of government” to pass laws to enshrine the right of women to have an abortion, as Supreme Court chief justice John Roberts confirmed the draft ruling by justice Samuel Alito, published by Politico, was genuine even if it was not necessarily the court’s final decision.

“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,” Mr Biden said in a statement on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST).

“Roe says what all basic mainstream religions have historically concluded — that the right — that the existence of a human life and being is not in question,” the President told reporters on Tuesday before departing for a flight to Alabama, referring to the 1973 Supreme Court decision that found abortion was protected by the US constitution.

Vice president Kamala Harris slammed the draft ruling too, warning of a future where governments “can potentially interfere in the personal decisions you make about your life”.

The 98-page judgment, which would leave the issue of abortion to state parliaments, sent shockwaves throughout the US political establishment on Tuesday, as strategists weighed up the impact on the midterm elections in November and politicians mulled how to respond to a verdict that wasn’t expected for months.

“Make no mistake, reproductive rights will be on the ballot and this midterm election is more important now than ever,” The Democratic National Committee said in a statement.

Republicans slammed the leak as an attack on the Supreme Court itself, and an attempt to derail a forthcoming opinion that some conservatives had been hoping for almost fifty years.

“By every indication, this was yet another escalation in the radical left’s ongoing campaign to bully and intimidate federal judges and substitute mob rule for the rule of law,” said Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell.

Surveys show that around two thirds of Americans say they are opposed to overturning the landmark Roe v Wade decision, which provided women the right to have an abortion except in the final trimester of pregnancy.

The court’s potential ruling, wildly unpopular among Democrats, could help Washington’s ruling party cling onto power in Congress in forthcoming November elections, in which Republicans were expecting to do well, by motivating the base of the party to campaign.

Justice Roberts ordered an inquiry into the leaked memo on Tuesday, describing it as a “betrayal” that “will not succeed”.

“This was a singular and egregious breach of that trust that is an affront to the Court and the community of public servants who work here,” he said in a statement.

The lengthy ruling, dated February, which appeared to have the support of a majority of the nine justices on the court, argued the court’s earlier 1973 decision was “egregiously wrong” in finding a constitutional right to abortion and had “usurped” the role of state parliaments to decide for themselves.

The court’s judgment was in response to a new law in Mississippi, which would ban abortions beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy. Many US states have started to pass laws to curb abortion rights, including Texas and Florida, the second and third largest US states by population.

Washington DC police closed some streets around the Supreme Court on Monday night and stationed extra officers in the area Tuesday to prepare for protests, although no violence had been reported in the vicinity of as of Tuesday afternoon.

California’s Democrat governor Gavin Newsom said his state, the largest by population, would propose a right to abortion in the state’s constitution. “We can‘t trust SCOTUS to protect the right to abortion, so we’ll do it ourselves,” Newsom said in a tweet, using an acronym to refer to the top US court

Republican governor of South Dakota Kristi Noem, a potential contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, advocated for laws to make abortion illegal.

“If this report is true and Roe v. Wade is overturned, I will immediately call for a special session to save lives and guarantee that every unborn child has a right to life in South Dakota,” she said in a tweet.