Report: Draft opinion suggests US Supreme Court will overturn Roe v. Wade; local leaders react

WASHINGTON — A draft opinion circulated among Supreme Court justices suggests that earlier this year a majority of them had thrown support behind overturning the 1973 case Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide, according to a report published Monday night in Politico.

Protests were planned across the country on Tuesday, including in Sonoma County, in response to the report. Pro-choice supporters were set to gather in Santa Rosa’s Old Courthouse Square and in downtown Sebastopol at 5 p.m., local organizers said.

It’s unclear if the draft opinion published Monday represents the Supreme Court’s final word on the matter.

The Associated Press could not immediately confirm the authenticity of the draft Politico posted, which if verified marks a shocking revelation of the high court’s secretive deliberation process, particularly before a case is formally decided.

A Supreme Court spokeswoman said the court had no comment.

Word of the high court’s potential decision was met with anger, fear and action Monday evening by a number of local leaders in the North Bay.

Sonoma County Democratic Party Chair Pat Sabo said that while the draft opinion isn’t surprising given the number of conservative judges who’ve been appointed to the Supreme Court in recent years, if it’s real “it’s extremely upsetting.”

"I hope this is an eye-opener to Americans to recognize how important their vote is,“ she said. ”Never take anything for granted.”

She added that a ban on abortions could have a long-term effect on women.

“Anger, I think, is an appropriate feeling for many of us at this point,” Sabo said. “It’s just a matter of the fact that women are dying at a higher rate in the countries that have banned it because they have to go to people who are not prepared to give safe abortions. ... And that’s exactly what it was in this country prior to Roe v. Wade.“

Politico published what was labeled as a “1st Draft” of the “Opinion of the Court” in a case challenging Mississippi's ban on abortion after 15 weeks, a case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.

The Supreme Court has yet to issue a ruling in the case, and opinions — and even justices’ votes — have been known to change during the drafting process. The court is expected to rule on the case before its term is up in late June or early July.

Reacting to the reports Monday evening, Katrina Phillips, chair of the Sonoma County Commission on Human Rights, worried what this might mean moving forward, should the high court actually strike down Roe v. Wade.

“I’m not trying to be dramatic, this is all-out war and this is not just about abortion,” she said. “This is about medical rights for all citizens of the United States.

“When the government can control you medically, it can control your whole life,” Phillips said, adding “...if the people of Sonoma (County) can’t see that this is how the government is trying to control our bodies, our lives and our souls, and they won’t stand up and fight this, then I don’t know what to do.”

The draft is signed by Justice Samuel Alito, a member of the court's 6-3 conservative majority, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” the draft opinion states.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” it adds, referencing the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey that affirmed Roe’s finding of a constitutional right to abortion services but allowed states to place some constraints on the practice. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

The draft opinion in effect states there is no constitutional right to abortion services and would allow individual states to more heavily regulate or outright ban the procedure.

Kristine Burk, a Santa Rosa criminal defense attorney, who said she supported the California Abortion Rights Action League in the 1990s, suspects California will be among a number of states supporting abortion rights.

“For those who can travel to California, I would expect we would get people that would visit here to exercise that decision to terminate a pregnancy,” she said.

State governments across the country have been racing to pass new abortion laws ahead of this anticipated decision. California and other Democrat-led states are trying to increase access or strengthen protections around abortions, while Republican-led states are passing bans and restrictions.

In September, California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom convened the California Future of Abortion Council, “to advance the state’s leadership on reproductive freedom” in anticipation of the growing challenges to abortion rights in other states.

Reacting Monday night to the Politico report, Newsom didn’t mince words.

“Our daughters, sisters, mothers, and grandmothers will not be silenced. The world is about to hear their fury. California will not sit back. We are going to fight like hell,” he tweeted on his official Twitter feed.

Later in the evening Newsom’s office announced that he would join with state Sen. Toni G. Atkins, the Senate president pro tempore, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon in “proposing an amendment to enshrine the right to choose in the California constitution.”

Atkins, a San Diego Democrat, and Rendon, a Democrat from Lakewood, in a joint statement with the governor, added, “We know we can’t trust the Supreme Court to protect reproductive rights, so California will build a firewall around this right in our state constitution. Women will remain protected here.”

State Sen. Mike McGuire, a North Bay Democrat from Healdsburg, also turned to Twitter to voice his concern.

“Today’s news is horrifying. Reproductive rights are under attack. We will not go backwards,” he said on his official Twitter feed. “We will not back down. California will always defend reproductive freedom.”

Word of the draft opinion spread quickly amid an ongoing legislative push to restrict abortion in several Republican-led states — Oklahoma being the most recent — even before the court issues its decision.

Politico, in its report, said only that it received “a copy of the draft opinion from a person familiar with the court’s proceedings in the Mississippi case along with other details supporting the authenticity of the document.”

The leak jump-started the intense political reverberations that the high court’s ultimate decision was expected to have in the midterm election year. Already politicians on both sides of the aisle were seizing on the report to fundraise and energize their supporters on either side of the hot-button issue.

Reacting Monday evening to news of the draft decision, a post made on the official Twitter feed of Planned Parenthood stressed that abortions are still legal in this country.

A follow-up tweet by the international nonprofit agency, which provides reproductive health care and sex education, then urged supporters to sign a petition to fight back against ongoing political efforts to ban abortions in 26 states in the U.S.

Critics of those measures have said low-income women will disproportionately bear the burden of any new restrictions.

Jodi Hicks, the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California, tweeted, “This is the nightmare scenario we in the reproductive health, rights, and justice space have been sounding the alarm about -- especially once SCOTUS had a conservative majority.”

She added, “To Californians, and people who may seek care here due to hostile bans in their home state, know this: Planned Parenthood health centers across California will remain open. They will remain willing to help.”

An AP-NORC poll in December found that Democrats increasingly see protecting abortion rights as a high priority for the government.

Other polling shows relatively few Americans want to see Roe overturned.

In 2020, AP VoteCast found that 69% of voters in the presidential election said the Supreme Court should leave the Roe v. Wade decision as is; just 29% said the court should overturn the decision. In general, AP-NORC polling finds a majority of the public favors abortion being legal in most or all cases.

Still, when asked about abortion policy generally, Americans have nuanced attitudes on the issue, and many don’t think that abortion should be possible after the first trimester or that women should be able to obtain a legal abortion for any reason.

In Sonoma County, opponents of the potential court opinion stressed that women should have the right to choose what’s best for them.

“I’m pro-choice. I’m not pro-abortion; I’m pro-choice,” Phillips said.

Alito, in the draft opinion, said the court can't predict how the public might react and shouldn't try.

“We cannot allow our decisions to be affected by any extraneous influences such as concern about the public’s reaction to our work,” he wrote, according to Politico.

At arguments in December, all six conservative justices signaled that they would uphold the Mississippi law, and five asked questions that suggested that overruling Roe and Casey was a possibility.

Only Chief Justice John Roberts seemed prepared to take the smaller step of upholding the 15-week ban, though that too would be a significant weakening of abortion rights.

Until now, the court has allowed states to regulate but not ban abortion before the point of viability, around 24 weeks.

The court's three liberal justices seemed likely to be in dissent.

It's impossible to know what efforts are taking place behind the scenes to influence any justice's vote. If Roberts is inclined to allow Roe to survive, he need only pick off one other conservative vote to deprive the court of a majority to overrule the abortion landmark.

Press Democrat Staff Writer Colin Atagi contributed to this report.