May 02, 2022 06:50 PM UTC

Cory's Revenge: SCOTUS Has Voted To Overturn Roe v. Wade

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• by: Colorado Pols

A development shocking for its immediacy if not wholly unexpected, Politico reporting via an unprecedented leak that the U.S. Supreme Court has voted to overturn both Roe v. Wade and its affirming subsequent decision Casey v. Planned Parenthood, throwing abortion rights into jeopardy across the nation where statutory and/or constitutional protections do not already exist, and triggering total bans on the procedure in a number of 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.

“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…

That we are even reading this draft decision is indicative of something very unusual going on behind the scenes, reflecting the gravity of the situation:

No draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending. The unprecedented revelation is bound to intensify the debate over what was already the most controversial case on the docket this term.

We’ll update as local reaction comes in. This is a moment both long foreseen and long denied could ever happen by Colorado Republicans seeking to win elections despite their records in this avowedly pro-choice state. Having passed legislation codifying abortion rights in statute just this session and already seeing huge increases in patients coming to Colorado, our state is now a haven for abortion care that will soon be unavailable to millions of Americans.

And why is this happening? Because you were lied to, voters of Colorado. Authoritative voices you thought you could trust like the Denver Post’s editorial board told you that “[Cory] Gardner’s election would pose no threat to abortion rights,” and then Cory Gardner went on to vote for three right-wing Justices in his single term that undid conventional wisdom and made the “unthinkable” today’s reality. More than any other factor under the control of Colorado voters, that is why we are here today.

If nothing else, the consequences of ever letting a mistake like Cory Gardner happen again should be plain.