John Roberts, chief justice, U.S. Supreme Court

LANSING — Politico’s publishing of leaked Supreme Court opinion draft written by Justice Samuel Alito has touched off a firestorm, not only in Michigan, but across the entire nation.

Politico’s Monday evening article titled “Supreme Court has voted to overturn abortion rights, draft opinion shows” (https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473).

The first paragraph of the article reads: “The Supreme Court has voted to strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, according to an initial draft majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito circulated inside the court and obtained by POLITICO.”

The United States Supreme Court website on Tuesday challenged the article on Tuesday (https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/press/pressreleases/pr_05-03-22), stating in a press release that (Monday) a news organization published a copy of a draft opinion in a pending case.

“Justices circulate draft opinions internally as a routine and essential part of the Court’s confidential deliberative work,” the release states. “Although the document described in yesterday’s reports is authentic, it does not represent a decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”

The Supreme Court Office of Public Information decline comment Wed. morning.

ABC News (https://abcnews.go.com/ Politics/chief-justice-roberts-responds-leaked-supreme-court-draft/story?id=84468850) reported on Tuesday that outside of the Supreme Court, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., blasted what she called “an extremist U.S. Supreme Court” seeking to “impose their extremist views on all of the women of this country — and they are wrong!” she yelled to the crowd.

Alito’s opinion draft, however, as published by Politico (https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/21835435/scotus-initial-draft.pdf) reports that Alito was considering the question of the 1973 Roe v Wad case from a constitutional, rather than political point.

“In interpreting what is meant by the Fourteenth Amendment’s reference to ‘liberty,’, Alito wrote, (p.13) “we must guard against the natural human tendency to confuse what that Amendment protects with our own ardent views about the liberty that Americans should enjoy. That is why the Court has long been “reluctant” to recognize rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution.”

Page five of Alito’s opinion draft states an opinion that Roe and Casey, must be overruled, because the Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including “the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey now chiefly rely — the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Alito also wrote that that the Due Process Clause has been held to guarantee some rights not mentioned in the Constitution, but any such right must be deeply rooted in America’s history and tradition, and implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, adding that the right to abortion does not fall within the category, because until the latter part of the 20th century, such a right was entirely unknown in American law.

In the event that the Supreme Court does strike down Roe v Wade, a 1931 Michigan abortion ban would again become law, which is something Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has vowed to “fight like hell.”