Many Americans woke up stunned, not realizing — and some still not believing — that Roe and the constitutional right to an abortion that it has guaranteed for five decades could disappear within a matter of weeks
Opponents and supporters of abortion rights had expected for months that the Supreme Court would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, but the leaked draft opinion late Monday came as if out of the blue, setting off shock, outrage and jubilation on either side of the nation’s deeply polarized abortion debate.
Activists took to the streets to declare their intention to fight harder, especially over control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections. Candidates sought to raise money off the news. And in states that are poised to ban abortion or guard access to it, politicians and governors declared that they were ready to act.
Yet many Americans woke up stunned, not realizing — and some still not believing — that Roe and the constitutional right to an abortion that it has guaranteed for five decades could disappear within a matter of weeks.
Connie Wright, a Des Moines, Iowa-area grandmother of eight, was getting ready for bed Monday night when her phone lit up with a friend’s text about the leak. Searching online to confirm it, Wright fell to her knees. “I feel like this is something I’ve been praying for forever,” she later said. “And that it was answered prayer. And I just kept thanking the Lord for these innocent babies’ lives that are being saved.”
Jordyn McFadden, a first-year law student at Washington University in St. Louis who was studying outside a Starbucks, said the draft ruling that suggests Roe v. Wade will be overturned made her see the Supreme Court as “tyrannical.”
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