About 30 people gathered at the corner of Limestone Street and Xenia Avenue on Saturday, May 7; the reason — abortion rights. Organized by villagers Zoë Hayes and Lindsay Burke, the rally was one of many demonstrations across the country in response to a leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion nationwide.
News outlet Politico released the leaked document on Monday, May 2. A majority of Supreme Court justices supported the draft opinion, penned by Justice Samuel Alito, in the case of Jackson v. Mississippi, saying that the right to restrict abortion access should lie with individual states, and that Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Pennsylvania, two landmark abortion rights cases, should be overturned.
While Roe was the case that legalized abortion in the United States, Casey, decided in 1992, reaffirmed the power of Roe, saying, in part:
“The ability of women to participate equally in the economic and social life of the Nation has been facilitated by their ability to control their reproductive lives. The Constitution serves human values, and while the effect of reliance on Roe cannot be exactly measured, neither can the certain costs of overruling Roe for people who have ordered their thinking and living around that case be dismissed.”
According to the draft opinion, the Court must consider the definition of “liberty” when interpreting the dictates of the 14th amendment. The draft reads, in part:
“Guided by the history and tradition that map the essential components of our Nation’s contempt of ordered liberty, we must ask what the 14th amendment means by the term ‘liberty.’ When we engage in the inquiry in the present case, the clear answer is that the 14th amendment does not protect the right to an abortion.”
