The repeal of the right to an abortion would be Trump’s real legacy

Washington: If the US Supreme Court’s draft decision on Roe v Wade holds true, then the battleground for this year’s midterm elections has been well and truly set.

Make no mistake: today’s leaked draft decision has the potential to completely reshape the social and political landscape in America.

For almost 50 years, Roe v Wade has guaranteed that women have a federal constitutional right to abortion in the US.

A Supreme Court repeal of Roe V Wade would reshape America’s political future around this issue. Credit: AP

But the draft ruling written by Justice Samuel Alito and leaked to Politico is an unflinching rebuke of that guarantee.

Not only does it argue that the law was “egregiously wrong” from the start, it also hands the authority over women’s reproductive rights to the states.

“We hold that Roe and Casey (a 1992 decision that limited but didn’t eliminate abortion rights) must be overruled,” Alito wrote in the document, labelled as the “Opinion of the Court”.

“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

If Roe v Wade is overturned by the conservative majority of the court, it is expected that abortion could quickly become illegal in as much as half the country.

Such a move would cement the result Donald Trump set in motion by nominating three of the court’s six conservative justices: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

In a sign of just how much of a powder keg this issue will be, hundreds of angry protesters gathered on the steps of the US Supreme Court immediately after the news broke, while Democrats urged Congress to pass a bill codifying Roe v Wade in response to the draft.

Some, like Senator Bernie Sanders, a former Democratic presidential rival to Joe Biden, even called for an end to the filibuster rule- which requires a minimum of 60 votes - in order to ensure such a bill passes.

Others, such as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, described the potential ruling as “one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history.”

“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,” they said in a joint statement

“The Republican-appointed Justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v Wade would go down as an abomination.”

The court’s ruling will not be finalised until it is published, which is expected to be sometime in late June or July.

But with the midterms approaching in November - and the Democrats widely expected to lose their slim Congressional majority - the party does not have the luxury of time.

Boiled down, the court’s decision centres on a Mississippi law that currently bans abortions after 15 weeks - far earlier than the Supreme Court precedent currently allows.

But even before the decision is finalised, 2022 is already on track to become the worst year for abortion rights in the US.

According to an analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, which tracks reproductive health policy, at least 529 abortion restrictions had been introduced in bills across 41 states by the end of March this year.

Many states have passed bills in recent weeks banning abortions at 15 weeks of pregnancy, including Florida, Kentucky and Arizona.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed into law a ban on abortions after 15 weeks. Credit: AP

The Republican-led state of Oklahoma was among the latest to join the list when it approved a bill last month that would make performing an abortion a crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison, or a maximum fine of $US100,000 ($132,000) or both.

The bill passed without any debate in the House of Representatives, making exceptions only for an abortion performed to save the life of the mother, but not in cases of rape or incest.

The sliver of hope for pro-choice advocates is that Supreme Court opinions are often circulated to try to convince other justices to vote a particular way.

And leaked decisions such as this are almost unheard of, so there’s every chance it could have been a strategic move to push the court in another direction.

The bad news, however, is that the liberal justices who would most likely vote to keep the current protections in place only make up three out of the nine Supreme Court members on the bench.

What’s more, since oral arguments for Mississippi case took place in December, many observers had been expecting the legal landscape to shift, with the only question being whether the court would merely narrow abortion rights or repeal Roe v Wade entirely.

It looks like the court has chosen the latter.

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