Alito's Final Dobbs Opinion Is Even More Extreme Than His First Draft
On Friday, the Supreme Court handed down its 6–3 ruling overturning a Mississippi abortion ban and 5–4 ruling ending the 49-year-old precedent Roe v. Wade and, with it, the constitutional right to an abortion in the United States. The majority opinion was authored by Justice Samuel Alito, a George W. Bush appointee. A version of the opinion was leaked last month.
When that draft opinion leaked, I analyzed the most extreme lines that vilified “abortionists” and “murderess[es],” and opened up the possibility that other unenumerated rights like birth control and marriage equality might be diminished or completely ended. The most radical passages, however, opened the door to fetal personhood laws that would ultimately criminalize abortions and even miscarriages as homicide.
Now that the final copy of the opinion is out, what has changed from that initial draft? It turns out, virtually nothing. Save for some stylistic and typographical changes, the official version appears to leave Alito’s words from the draft almost entirely unchanged. The one substantive change is the addition of sections seeking to rebut the dissenting opinion of Justices Sonia Sotomayor (Obama appointee), Elena Kagan (Obama appointee), and Stephen Breyer (Clinton appointee), as well as the concurring opinion of Chief Justice John Roberts (George W. Bush appointee).
What’s clear is that the final opinion, with the new additions, is even more radical than the extremely radical initial draft.
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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/alito-dobbs-opinion-ending-abortion-rights-extreme-lines.html
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