Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade: leaked ruling

On Monday, POLITICO revealed that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has already written the opinion that will overturn abortion rights at the federal level in the United States.

"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. 'Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,' Alito writes," reported Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward. "'We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,' he writes in the document, labeled as the 'Opinion of the Court.' 'It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.'"

"Deliberations on controversial cases have in the past been fluid. Justices can and sometimes do change their votes as draft opinions circulate and major decisions can be subject to multiple drafts and vote-trading, sometimes until just days before a decision is unveiled. The court’s holding will not be final until it is published, likely in the next two months," said the report.

"The immediate impact of the ruling as drafted in February would be to end a half-century guarantee of federal constitutional protection of abortion rights and allow each state to decide whether to restrict or ban abortion," continued the report. "It’s unclear if there have been subsequent changes to the draft."

Several states have already passed varying degrees of abortion bans in anticipation of the court issuing such a ruling.

If issued, the ruling will almost certainly kick off a redoubled flurry of new legislation to restrict abortion rights, as well as counter-legislation from states supportive of abortion rights making it easier for women in affected states to seek relief.