On Monday evening, a draft of the Supreme Court majority opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization—a challenge to Mississippi's legislative sanctions on reproductive freedom—was leaked.
The 98 page draft was attributed to Justice Samuel Alito and later verified as authentic but not finalized by Chief Justice John Roberts.
In the opinion—expected to be cosigned by Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, Alito makes clear the intent of the five conservative justices is to overturn the prior SCOTUS rulings in 1973's Roe v. Wade and 1992's Casey v. Planned Parenthood.
Three of the five justices were nominated by former Republican President Donald Trump. Neil Gorsuch was confirmed by the then Republican controlled Senate after they blocked President Barack Obama's SCOTUS pick for almost a year.
Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett were pushed through the confirmation process before Republicans lost both the presidency and control of the Senate.
Two supposedly moderate Republicans—Senator Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—stated many times that preservation of reproductive rights would affect their SCOTUS votes. Despite the fact Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett were specifically chosen for Trump by a conservative Evangelical Christian PAC for their pro-fundamentalist views, Collins and Murkowski claimed reproductive freedom was safe in their hands.
Now that Collins and Murkowski were proven wrong, Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York is taking them to task for failing to do their due diligence before voting to confirm Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett.
Both Murkowski and Collins are claiming they were misled.
But AOC isn't letting the GOP Senators off the hook with those excuses.
AOC tweeted:
"Murkowski voted for Amy Coney Barrett when Trump himself proclaimed that he was appointing justices specifically to overturn Roe."
"She and Collins betrayed the nation’s reproductive rights when they were singularly capable of stopping the slide."
"They don’t get to play victim now."
Representative Ocasio-Cortez pointed out how Democratic Senators like Kyrsten Sinema contributed to the repeal of reproductive rights as well.
Others also called out Murkowski and Collins as naive, ignorant or worse.
Chief Justice Roberts verified on Tuesday that the 98 page draft was authentic.
However, Roberts stated "it does not represent a decision by the Court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case."
An investigation into how the draft was leaked launched on Tuesday at the request of Roberts.
@jessicachastain/Instagram
