Thoughts on the Leaked Dobbs Draft
May. 3rd, 2022 01:31 amThis one's entirely a U.S. politics post – feel free to skip.
There's a difference between knowing abstractly that Roe v. Wade will almost certainly be overturned this term and actually reading a draft of the opinion. Assuming that the final published opinion is substantially similar to the leaked draft, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health will turn over all responsibility for determining the legal status of abortion to state legislatures, which will lead to an even more radical divergence in abortion access between liberal and conservative states.
The median age in the United States is about 39 years; Roe is 49 years old. The majority of Americans have never lived in a U.S. without a federally recognized constitutional right to abortion, however limited that right may be. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey – a case that will be overturned alongside Roe – the justices who wrote the controlling opinion did not endorse the reasoning in Roe, but nevertheless upheld its fundamental principles on stare decisis grounds, even though Roe was at that point only 19 years old. Considering the number of people who have relied on Roe over the decades, it should have been afforded far more protection under stare decisis than this patently partisan Court has evidently decided to give it.
If you have some extra cash, now is a great time to consider donating to abortion funds, especially in those states where draconian abortion restrictions are poised to go into effect as soon as Roe is formally overturned. You can find a list of U.S. abortion funds on the website of the National Network of Abortion Funds; I've sent a little something to the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. (And as an extra incentive, the wonderful![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chestnut_pod is offering thank-you gifts of drabbles or podfic for donations of $18 or more to any U.S. abortion fund or to the NNAF itself; see details on their journal here.)
Less important thoughts:
(1) A draft of a Supreme Court opinion being leaked is genuinely unprecedented, and I'm very curious how the Court will react. It's common for published opinions to be very different from their early drafts; will that be the case for the final opinion in Dobbs, or will the publication of the draft "freeze" it to some degree?
(2) I'm a little surprised that Alito is writing for the majority rather than Barrett. It makes sense in terms of seniority, but I would have expected the Court to go with Barrett solely for the optics, on the theory that having a woman write the opinion overturning Roe would make the result appear less sexist.
There's a difference between knowing abstractly that Roe v. Wade will almost certainly be overturned this term and actually reading a draft of the opinion. Assuming that the final published opinion is substantially similar to the leaked draft, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health will turn over all responsibility for determining the legal status of abortion to state legislatures, which will lead to an even more radical divergence in abortion access between liberal and conservative states.
The median age in the United States is about 39 years; Roe is 49 years old. The majority of Americans have never lived in a U.S. without a federally recognized constitutional right to abortion, however limited that right may be. In Planned Parenthood v. Casey – a case that will be overturned alongside Roe – the justices who wrote the controlling opinion did not endorse the reasoning in Roe, but nevertheless upheld its fundamental principles on stare decisis grounds, even though Roe was at that point only 19 years old. Considering the number of people who have relied on Roe over the decades, it should have been afforded far more protection under stare decisis than this patently partisan Court has evidently decided to give it.
If you have some extra cash, now is a great time to consider donating to abortion funds, especially in those states where draconian abortion restrictions are poised to go into effect as soon as Roe is formally overturned. You can find a list of U.S. abortion funds on the website of the National Network of Abortion Funds; I've sent a little something to the Mississippi Reproductive Freedom Fund. (And as an extra incentive, the wonderful
chestnut_pod is offering thank-you gifts of drabbles or podfic for donations of $18 or more to any U.S. abortion fund or to the NNAF itself; see details on their journal here.) Less important thoughts:
(1) A draft of a Supreme Court opinion being leaked is genuinely unprecedented, and I'm very curious how the Court will react. It's common for published opinions to be very different from their early drafts; will that be the case for the final opinion in Dobbs, or will the publication of the draft "freeze" it to some degree?
(2) I'm a little surprised that Alito is writing for the majority rather than Barrett. It makes sense in terms of seniority, but I would have expected the Court to go with Barrett solely for the optics, on the theory that having a woman write the opinion overturning Roe would make the result appear less sexist.
