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In the leaked draft opinion, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote the majority\u2019s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, and four other Republican-appointed justices \u2014 Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett \u2014 voted with him in the conference held among the justices, according to Politico.<\/p>\n
The news organization reported that Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were working on dissents. It was not clear how Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. planned to vote.<\/p>\n
Here is what the justices, and soon-to-be Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who will be sworn in when Justice Breyer retires at the end of the term, have said about Roe v. Wade:<\/p>\n
Justice Alito has consistently opposed<\/a> legal protections for abortion.<\/p>\n As a government lawyer applying for a promotion in the Reagan administration in 1985, he wrote that he was \u201cparticularly proud\u201d<\/a> to have helped advance the argument that \u201cthe Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion.\u201d<\/p>\n At his confirmation hearing in 2006, Justice Alito said repeatedly that Roe was a precedent that warranted respect but declined to call it \u201csettled law.\u201d He also wrote the majority opinion in a case in 2018 that overruled<\/a> a major labor decision, including a 14-page discussion of the \u201cfactors that should be taken into account in deciding whether to overrule a past decision.\u201d<\/p>\n Justice Barrett\u2019s record shows her committed opposition to the right to abortion<\/a>. In 2006, she signed a newspaper ad<\/a> that supported overturning the \u201cbarbaric legacy\u201d of Roe.<\/p>\n During her confirmation hearing in 2020, Justice Barrett said that Roe was not a \u201csuper-precedent,\u201d or a decision considered so well established that it could not be overturned. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that Roe should be overruled but, descriptively, it does mean that it\u2019s not a case that everyone has accepted and doesn\u2019t call for its overruling,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Justice Breyer has been a longtime supporter of abortion rights. \u201cThe case of Roe v. Wade has been the law for 21 years or more,\u201d he said at his confirmation hearing in 1994. \u201cThat is the law.\u201d<\/p>\n He also expressed strong disapproval over a Texas abortion law<\/a> prohibiting most abortions that went into effect in September. In an interview with NPR, Mr. Breyer described the U.S. Supreme Court refusal to block the law<\/a> as \u201cvery, very, very wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n At his hearing in 2017, Justice Gorsuch attested that Roe was precedent, and that part of the value of precedent is that it \u201cadds to the determinacy of law.\u201d However, he voted against striking down laws that would restrict abortion in both Texas last year and Louisiana in 2020.<\/p>\n Justice Kagan dissented when the Supreme Court allowed the Texas law<\/a> to go into effect in September, criticizing the court\u2019s practice of deciding important issues in rushed decisions without full briefing or oral argument, which Supreme Court specialists call its \u201cshadow docket.\u201d<\/p>\n Justice Kagan has also taken a hard line on upholding precedent<\/a>, perhaps more than any other current member of the court. \u201cIt is hard to overstate the value, in a country like ours, of stability in the law,\u201d she has said.<\/p>\n At his confirmation hearing in 2018, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh called a woman\u2019s right to an abortion \u201csettled law.\u201d<\/a> He referred to court cases as \u201cprecedent on precedent,\u201d and said that they could not be easily overturned.<\/p>\n In 2003, however, he said<\/a> he did not believe that the abortion rights precedent should be considered a settled legal issue, writing, \u201cI am not sure that all legal scholars refer to Roe as the settled law of the land at the Supreme Court level since Court can always overrule its precedent, and three current Justices on the Court would do so.\u201d<\/p>\n Justice Kavanaugh has also supported abortion restrictions with some moderation<\/a>. In 2019, for example, when the court temporarily blocked a Louisiana law restricting abortions, he issued a dissent that acknowledged the key legal precedent.<\/p>\n Chief Justice Roberts was in the majority when the court in 2007 upheld<\/a> a federal law banning an abortion procedure. When the court struck down<\/a> Texas abortion restrictions in 2016, he dissented.<\/p>\n Although known for crafting narrow and incremental decisions, the chief justice has recently voted in favor of some abortion rights.<\/p>\n Chief Justice Roberts voted to strike down a restrictive Louisiana abortion law<\/a> in 2020. In a concurring opinion, he identified what he said was the central principle of Roe v. Wade: that women have the right to end their pregnancies before fetal viability.<\/p>\n In September 2021, he dissented when the court refused to block the Texas law banning most abortions after six weeks, voting with the court\u2019s three remaining liberals.<\/p>\n Justice Sotomayor has been the Supreme Court\u2019s leading voice in support of abortion rights<\/a> since the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She also filed a dissent when the court refused to block the Texas law<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Court\u2019s order is stunning,\u201d she wrote. \u201cPresented with an application to enjoin a flagrantly unconstitutional law engineered to prohibit women from exercising their constitutional rights and evade judicial scrutiny, a majority of justices have opted to bury their heads in the sand.\u201d<\/p>\n Justice Thomas has been a committed foe<\/a> of a constitutional protection for abortion.<\/p>\n In 1992, he dissented in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the majority reaffirmed the core of the Roe decision, saying Roe was \u201cplainly wrong\u201d and \u201cshould be overruled.\u201d In a 2000 dissent, he wrote: \u201cAlthough a state may permit abortion, nothing in the Constitution dictates that a state must do so.\u201d In 2019, he called the decision \u201cnotoriously incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\nJustice Amy Coney Barrett<\/span><\/h3>\n
Justice Stephen Breyer<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Justice Neil Gorsuch<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Justice Elena Kagan<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Justice Brett Kavanaugh<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n
Chief Justice John Roberts<\/span><\/h3>\n
Justice Sonia Sotomayor<\/span><\/h3>\n
Justice Clarence Thomas<\/span><\/h3>\n
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n