Colleagues and Friends,

Politico’s publication of an apparently leaked draft of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade is a terrifying glimpse into a future where women are stripped of their right to choose what happens to their own bodies in private consultations with their families and physicians.



We are sharing an article I wrote in Bloomberg Law (@BLawInsight) about the horrifying contents of Justice Alito’s draft, its sweeping implications, and the need for us all to speak out now and strategize about ways to protect women from this extraordinary loss of a constitutional protection.



Please see: SCOTUS Draft Rejecting Roe Must Spur Legal Profession to Speak Up



Justice Alito’s full-throated repudiation of Roe will allow the states to criminalize decisions made by women, their physicians, and others that state legislatures may choose to punish should a women seek to terminate her pregnancy. No matter the circumstances – rape, incest, illness that threatens the life of the mother – all are fair targets in a decision that effectively gives state governments control over the most basic aspects of a women’s body, a control that many states have already chosen to exercise.



Alito’s draft disingenuously tries to distinguish this case from other long-standing constitutional rights. Just as people said that Roe would never be overturned, are we now willing to take that same myopic view about other individual rights, including the right to birth control in the Griswold decision that became constitutionally protected a mere eight years before Roe was decided?



It appears that no individual constitutional right is safe.



If ever there was a call to the legal profession to step up and speak out, it is now. Otherwise, our silence will speak volumes about the future we are willing to accept.


Lauren Stiller Rikleen

Interim Executive Director, LDAD

Lawyers Defending American Democracy
303 Congress Street
Boston, MA 02210
United States
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