Alito’s opinion rests almost exclusively on a bizarre and impoverished historical analysis. But, of course, this remains unknown.Ībout as wholly speculative as the question of who leaked this decision is the history offered to support it. One theory has it that whoever disclosed the draft is trying to make it more difficult if not impossible for Roberts to recruit a defector from the majority. Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan are sure to dissent. Five Justices have reportedly voted in accordance with the draft: Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch. Chief Justice John Roberts, promising an investigation, has not denied its authenticity. Wade, the 1973 decision legalizing abortion. The draft decision, which Politico published on Monday night, would overturn Roe v. “The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” Alito wrote, in a leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v.

Legally, most women did not exist as persons.īecause these facts appear to surprise Alito, abortion is likely to become a crime in at least twenty states this spring. At the time, women could neither hold office nor run for office, and, except in New Jersey, and then only fleetingly, women could not vote. There were no women among the hundreds of people who participated in ratifying conventions in the states. Most consequentially, there is nothing in that document-or in the circumstances under which it was written-that suggests its authors imagined women as part of the political community embraced by the phrase “We the People.” There were no women among the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. There is nothing in that document about women at all. As it happens, there is also nothing at all in that document, which sets out fundamental law, about pregnancy, uteruses, vaginas, fetuses, placentas, menstrual blood, breasts, or breast milk. This will be, in large part, because Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is surprised that there is so little written about abortion in a four-thousand-word document crafted by fifty-five men in 1787.

Within a matter of months, women in about half of the United States may be breaking the law if they decide to end a pregnancy.

Jill lepore jane