This editorial board long has supported a woman's right to choose to have an abortion. We reaffirm that support here, grounded in our belief in a woman's autonomy over her own body and our long-standing commitment to individual freedoms, even as we lament the Monday night leak of a draft opinion from the U.S. Supreme Court, a further erosion of the fabric of the United States that's essential to a functioning democracy.
Contrary to what you likely are reading elsewhere, both of those positions can be held together.
And to focus your reading of this or any other piece of commentary only on where the greater emphasis lies, whether the bigger outrage is the leak or the opinion, is to miss the most profound lesson from a dark day for U.S. democracy.
The grimness of the moment has been underscored by Democrats championing the leak as a righteous act and by Republicans failing to understand the consequence of an attack on the settled law that stemmed from Roe v. Wade. America fully manifest as a zero-sum game is not the nation any of us will enjoy.
The Supreme Court confirmed Tuesday that the majority draft opinion written by Associate Justice Samuel Alito was a genuine document. The draft opinion argued for the overturning of the 1973 decision, which guaranteed federal constitutional protections for abortion rights, as well as the 1992 decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which largely confirmed that right.
In terms of the decision, Alito clearly believed that he was arguing an issue of constitutional law.
"Roe was egregiously wrong from the start," he wrote. "It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people's elected representatives." He hardly is alone in his legal point of view, and a generous reading of the opinion would differentiate it from banning the practice.
But the Supreme Court does not live in some vacuum removed from the rest of us, oblivious to history and the consequences of its rulings.
Not only is Roe settled law, but it has come up in one confirmation hearing after another, with several current court members effectively saying that they accepted its existence and its unique identity. Some of those asking the questions during those hearings now feel duped.
Roe v. Wade is freighted unlike any other issue in American jurisprudence, and its history is singular in terms of its interplay with the most emotional and crucial aspects of any human society -- how it treats birth, life and death.
The opinion reads as a nuclear option, and it has been leaked at a moment of nuclear fear. We urge the apparent majority to continue their work and rethink.
That said, this is a draft opinion and an internal document. No democracy can function without rigorous debate, and the Supreme Court is an institution that relies on trust.
If the improvements that naturally occur from collaboration -- the minds that are changed, the realities that are recognized -- are to be undermined like this, then the Supreme Court will not be able to function. No democracy can survive the collapse of its legal system. You can support the continuation of Roe v. Wade and still believe all this.