Roe V. Wade Will Be Struck Down, Politico Reports, Citing Leaked Draft

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court has voted to strike down Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that made abortion legal in all 50 states, Politico reported Monday. The news organization said it had obtained an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated inside the court.

The news site called the draft opinion "a full-throated, unflinching repudiation of the 1973 decision which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision — Planned Parenthood v. Casey — that largely maintained the right."

Alito wrote, "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start."

The court's ruling isn't expected until June or July, and the exact wording of the draft could change between now and then, Politico said.

• For the full report, go to Politico.

A vote to overturn Roe would send abortion access back to the states to decide. At least 26 are certain or likely to ban abortion, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights policy group.

The high court heard arguments on a Mississippi case challenging Roe late last year

The case at issue — Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Association — challenges a Mississippi law that bans abortions in most cases after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The law undercuts the standard set by Roe that guarantees women access to the procedure up until the fetus is viable outside her womb, typically around 23 or 24 weeks after conception, and longer in cases where the woman's life or health is in jeopardy.

The 6-3 conservative majority on the court previously signaled that it may be willing to impose new restrictions on abortion. Mississippi's lawyers argued that striking down the law is necessary to enforce its ban — striking down or gutting Roe and the Planned Parenthood v. Casey case that affirmed it.

In Roe, the Supreme Court said an unwanted pregnancy could lead a woman to "a distressful life and future." In the 1992 case, Casey v. Planned Parenthood, the court upheld Roe, finding that abortion rights were necessary for "women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the nation."

Lawyers for the state of Mississippi proposed an array of mechanisms to uphold the 15-week abortion ban but said the court ultimately should overturn the "egregiously wrong" Roe and Casey rulings.

If the court "does not impose a substantial obstacle to 'a significant number of women' seeking abortions," the state argued, the justices should reinterpret the "undue burden" standard established in Roe and give the state the authority to "prohibit elective abortions before viability" of the fetus.

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which challenged the law with the Jackson Women's Health Organization, argued that although the Constitution does not address pregnancy, courts have upheld the decision in Roe, which was tied to privacy and personal autonomy.

"Every version of the State's argument amounts to the same thing: a request that the Court scuttle a half-century of precedent and invite states to ban abortion entirely," the plaintiffs' brief states.

In oral arguments, Center for Reproductive Rights Senior Director Julie Rikelman said the state's ban on abortion two months before a fetus is viable outside the womb is "flatly unconstitutional under decades of precedent."

"Two generations have now relied on this right, and 1 out of every 4 women makes a decision to end a pregnancy," Rikelman said.

The plaintiffs also argued that denying women access to abortion is detrimental to their physical and emotional health.