OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
President Joe Biden made what many see as an extremely politically charged claim on Wednesday about tens of millions of Americans who support former President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies in regard to the leak of a preliminary Supreme Court draft decision appearing to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade case legalizing abortion in all states.
Following remarks at the White House about how his administration plans to cut the deficit by $1.5 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year, Biden addressed the leak and said it’s “about a lot more than abortion,” adding that the “MAGA crowd” is “the most extreme political organization that’s existed in recent American history.”
According to reports, the draft opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito and endorsed by a majority of the nine-member court. The opinion, which is not official, was a full rebuke of the alleged constitutionality of Roe and returns the issue to states for them to decide individually how they want to handle abortion. The decision does not outlaw or ban the procedure.
“This is about a lot more than abortion,” Biden said, pointing to Roe as part of the right to privacy as he did on Tuesday.
Fox News added:
Biden reflected on the Supreme Court confirmation process for former President Reagan’s nominee Robert Bork in the late 1980s, when he served as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“This reminds me of the debate with Robert Bork. Bork believed the only reason you had any inherent rights was because the government gave them to you,” Biden recalled. “When I was questioning him as the chairman, I said, ‘I believe I have the rights that I have not just because the government gave them to me, which you believe, but because I’m just a child of God—I exist.’”
“So, the idea that somehow there is an inherent right, that there is no right of privacy, that there is no right,” Biden continued. “There’d been a law saying a married couple could not purchase birth control in the privacy of their own bedroom and use it. Well, that got struck down.”
Fox News said that was a reference to Griswold v. Connecticut, which he said “was thought to be a bad decision, by working on, my guess is, the guys on the Supreme Court.”
“Now, what happens if you have states changing the law, saying that that that children who are LGBT, who can’t be in classrooms with other children, is that is that legit under the way that the decision is written?” Biden asked — though it’s not clear what he was referencing because no states are currently considering such a law, which would very clearly be unconstitutional.
“What are the next things that are going to be attacked?” he asked. “Because this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history—-in recent American history.”
Fox News explained further:
Biden’s comments about “MAGA” come after he declared last month that the GOP “ain’t your father’s Republican Party,” saying it has shifted to a “MAGA party,” warning that right-leaning politicians “who know better” are “afraid to act correctly” out of fear of losing a primary election.
The president’s remarks come on the heels of a stunning and unprecedented leak of the draft ruling to POLITICO, which published details as well as a copy of the draft itself Monday evening. The case considered both the Roe precedent as well as Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote in the document, labeled the “Opinion of the Court” for the case Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization involving a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks. “It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”
“Look, the idea, it concerns me, that we’re gonna, after 50 years, decide a woman does not have the right to choose, number one,” Biden said Tuesday. “But, equally as profound is the rationale, and it remained the every other decision in the notion of privacy is brought into question.”
He added: “If it were to be sustained, a whole range of rights are in question, and it would be a fundamental shift.”
