Leaked draft re: Roe v Wade

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The majority of Americans want a federal law making abortion legal, according to a new poll that follows the leak of a draft opinion from the Supreme Court potentially overturning Roe vs. Wade.

The poll from CBS News and YouGov showed 58 percent of U.S. adults favored making abortion legal, while 42 percent opposed it.

If the Supreme Court strikes down Roe, it would leave to set their own laws on abortion. About half of states are expected to quickly enact bans or severe restrictions in that scenario.

When divided along party lines, 76 percent of Democrats oppose making abortion illegal compared to 52 percent of Republicans.

In terms of Roe vs. Wade specifically, 64 percent of respondents wanted to keep it as is and 36 percent wanted to overturn it.

The poll included 2,088 U.S. adults and was conducted between May 4 and May 6. It has a margin of error of 2.7 percentage points.

The results follow another poll from the Pew Research Center that showed a majority of Americans support the right to an abortion

Calls from high-ranking Republicans for the Department of Justice (DOJ) to launch its own investigation into the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion are alarming those who say the DOJ would be blurring the separation of powers in pursuit of something that may not even be a crime.

The leak has set off a round of finger-pointing and calls for heads to roll following the history-making release of a draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade.

While Chief Justice John Roberts has ordered an investigation by the court’s marshal, some GOP lawmakers are concerned that won’t be adequate.

Since then, 21 House Republicans have sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding DOJ and FBI involvement, saying the leaker may have violated a law that prohibits removing records belonging to a judicial officer and that “an immediate criminal investigation is clearly warranted.”

The DOJ has a long history of involvement in leak investigations, but such work has typically only followed the disclosure with information that has some sort of national security component.

Asked about the prospects for a DOJ prosecution, Liz Hempowicz, director of policy at the Project on Government Oversight, asked, “For what crime?”

The Supreme Court’s code of conduct requires lifetime secrecy about the court’s inner workings, something experts say make it more of a violation of employment conditions than a crime.

“The leaker without question committed a fireable offense. The idea of a criminal inquiry is far more attenuated,” Bradley Moss, a national security lawyer, told The Hill by email.

Some experts have focused on a statute that allows prosecution of anyone who “embezzles, steals, purloins, or knowingly converts” a record.

Moss said the statue was the “only realistic criminal angle” assuming there was no bribery or hacking involved in the leak.

House Republicans have focused on a separate statute that focuses on anyone who “unlawfully conceals, removes, mutilates, obliterates, or destroys” records that are “filed or deposited with any clerk or officer of any court of the United States.”

But Moss said prosecution under such a statute would assume access to the document was unauthorized, something that may not be the case if the leaker was a clerk.

Even if there is a basis for an investigation, it’s not clear either entity is eager for the executive branch to become involved in court affairs.

Some lawmakers have been open about their hope the FBI is the one ultimately conducting the interviews at the court.
“We’re about to find out what our Department of Justice is made of,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said this week.

A clerk for a conservative justice is the “leading theory” amid intense speculation about who released a draft opinion authored by Justice Samuel Alito showing the court is set to overturn Roe v. Wade, according to legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg of NPR.

Totenberg said on ABC’s “This Week” that the prevailing theory is that a conservative clerk released the decision in an attempt to lock in the five justices who voted to support overturning Roe as Chief Justice John Roberts reportedly attempts to pull his colleagues toward a more moderate position.

Experts told The Hill they are divided on whether it was a liberal or conservative law clerk, each of whom could have had their own motives. But nearly everyone has agreed a sitting Supreme Court justice would not leak the draft opinion.

Of course it's medical. ^ Doctors swear an ethical oath. My query is pertaining to those ethics.

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These are the types of debates I'd like to see in bioethics and also in legislation.

i am reading this all over the web plus i know family members/relatives [heavily republican] who have had wet dreams about this for decades now. it is not just imaginary. again, the anti-abortionists are using the unborn as a convenient proxy for the poor/female. the fact that they don't give a good GD about the unborn once they are born [opposed to universal health care, opposed to universal pre-k, opposed to anything that would help raise all these extra unwanted children they are clamoring for]. i would believe them a bit more if they at least made a PEEP about charging men for impregnating women and then flaking out.