OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
The U.S. Supreme Court issued rulings as expected on Monday, but the highly anticipated decision on whether a majority of justices will follow through with overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 ruling legalizing abortion across the country, was not among them.
Monday’s rulings included: ZF Automotive U. S., Inc. v. Luxshare, Ltd., Denezpi v. United States, Kemp v. United States, a case related to drug and gun crimes, and immigration-related cases Johnson v. Arteaga-Martinez and Garland v. Gonzalez, Fox News reported, adding:
The Dobbs case stems from a dispute over a Mississippi law which bans abortion after 15 weeks. Argued in December, the case is seen as the biggest test yet for how the new 6-3 Republican-appointed majority on the court – capped with the confirmation of Justice Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 – will handle major controversial issues.
As the Supreme Court continues to finalize its ruling in Dobbs and several other cases before its summer recess, the investigation into who leaked the draft opinion by court officials is ongoing.
The original draft decision, written in February by Justice Samuel Alito, was leaked in an unprecedented manner to POLITICO, which published it in early May.
“The draft opinion is 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,” the outlet reported.
In the “Opinion of the Court,” Alito wrote: “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start.”
“We, therefore, hold the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives,” he added.
Democrats were largely unconcerned about the leak and instead ripped the opinion. One Democrat, Rep. Pramilla Jayapal of Washington, chair of the party’s left-wing Progressive Caucus, claimed the court had no authority to sack the Roe decision.
In an interview with CNN days after the leak, she suggested that the justices did not have the authority or “the right” to reverse the ruling.
She first emphasized the “terror,” “fear,” “disgust,” and “outrage” she said she is feeling over the draft opinion and its “rebuke of precedent.”
“This is a stunning, stunning rebuke of precedent and of the fundamental freedom that women have to make choices about our own bodies and our own futures and our own economic security,” she told “CNN Newsroom.”
While a number of other Democrats and their supporters in the media have claimed the draft opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito and was a full rebuke of Roe in a decision that, if it stands, would send the issue back to states to decide individually, represented “fascism,” Jayapal tried to argue that the court had no right to overturn the decades-old ruling because it is “settled law.”
“These justices are acting like this is somehow something that they have the right to change. They do not have the right to change this which has been settled law for two generations now of people who have grown up and have gone through their twenties in the firm belief that they can make these decisions about their own bodies,” Jayapal argued.
The leftist lawmaker went on to blast the “radicalization” of the right-leaning court and claimed that the potential decision could allow the justices to overturn other examples of “settled law.”
“The only thing that has changed is the makeup of the Supreme Court, the radicalization of the Supreme Court. And if they can do this for this issue, it means that they can ignore precedent for every other issue that we have considered settled law. So we cannot accept it. I don’t think people across this country are going to accept it, and of course, we have to now work extra hard to codify Roe v. Wade in the United States Congress,” she said.
The official ruling on ‘Roe’ was expected by some on Monday.
