Planned Parenthood says overturning Roe v. Wade would be 'dire' for country: This is not what Americans want
Planned Parenthood Federation of America senior director Sam Lau says the Supreme Court seems poised to overturn Roe v. Wade on 'America Reports.'
Guardian columnist Moira Donegan condemned the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion as a threat not only to abortion rights but to democracy itself in an opinion piece published Tuesday.
The article titled "As the US supreme court moves to end abortion, is America still a free country?" described the potential decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as "the worst possible outcome" for the nation.
A crowd of people gather outside the Supreme Court, Monday night, May 2, 2022 in Washington following reports of a leaked draft opinion by the court overturning Roe v. Wade. (AP Photo/Anna Johnson)
"The draft opinion, authored by Samuel Alito, the most rabidly hateful member of the court’s arch-conservative wing, will upend 50 years of precedent and undo a landmark ruling that has profoundly shaped legal doctrine, popular conceptions of the law, and millions of American lives," Donegan wrote. "It will make women prisoners to their own bodies, and to men’s ideas of what those bodies must mean. It will make our country weaker, crueler, stupider and less vibrant."
She also suggested that this decision, should it still be made, could lead to the further erosion of other rights such as the right to gay marriage and contraception.
"This an interpretation that, if carried to its logical conclusion, would eradicate many of Americans’ other rights that the court has recognized based on so-called substantive due process concerns, among them the right to contraception, the right to gay marriage, and the decriminalization of gay sex. The end of legal abortion will not be where the court’s reactionaries stop. They aim to hurt, punish and narrow the lives of Americans in many more cruel and inventive ways," Donegan wrote.
Members of the Supreme Court pose for a group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington. Seated from left are Associate Justice Samuel Alito, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Standing from left are Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. (AP)
Donegan concluded the decision would call into question whether America is even a democracy if it "does not protect abortion rights."
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"Some have raised doubts about whether America can call itself a democracy, now that policymaking power has been largely taken over by the unelected courts – whose decisions, like this one, are so radically out of step with, and indifferent to, public opinion. But it is also worth wondering whether any country can call itself a democracy that does not protect abortion rights," she wrote. "In making abortion illegal, the court is imposing a legal status that is so cruel, so personal and so life-altering on half its population, that those subject to this imposition cannot be called free. Is there any condition more essential to democratic citizenship than a person’s control over her own body? Can we call ourselves a free country without it?"
Abortion rights advocates gather outside the Oklahoma Capitol on Tuesday, April 5, 2022, in Oklahoma City, to protest several anti-abortion bills being considered by the GOP-led Legislature. (AP Photo/Sean Murphy)
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On Monday night, Politico reported on a draft opinion by Justice Samuel Alito that suggested the Supreme Court was voting in favor of overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide. However, several analysts noted that the leak was marked as an early draft that may have been revised later. The final opinion is not expected until June.
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