Biden Urges US Voters To 'Elect Pro-Choice Officials'

President Biden has urged voters to elect pro-choice candidates this November, hoping the “radical” leaked Supreme Court draft decision to overturn Roe v Wade, will help motivate both Democrats and Republicans who support a women's right to choose.

- Andrew Buncombe

The leaked draft ruling from the nation's highest court - both shocking and unsurprising - was widely condemned by activists and high-profile politicians such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Bernie Sanders, who said ending the federal right to legal abortion would most harm poorer women and women of colour.

They assessed that nearly 30 states would ban abortions, in almost every circumstance, if the leaked draft showing five members of the nine-member court supported voting to scrap Roe, became an official ruling. More than a dozen of those states include so-called "trigger” laws, that would make them active the moment Roe is overturned.

“This is the most ominous and alarming sign yet that our nation's highest court is poised to overturn Roe v Wade, ending the constitutional right to abortion as we know it and ripping away our freedom to decide if, when, and how to raise our families,” said Mini Timmaraju, president of Naral Pro-Choice America, one of the country's largest advocates for reproductive rights.

In a statement, added: “While this is a draft opinion and abortion is still legal, we need to brace for a future where more and more people are punished and criminalised for seeking and providing abortion care.” According to the leaked draft, first obtained by Politico and which Chief Justice John Roberts said was genuine, Justice Samuel Alito said that he and four other conservative justices – Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett - voted to overturn Roe after hearing oral arguments in a case relating to an abortion law in Mississippi, that the court had agreed to consider.

“Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” wrote Mr Alito, a conservative nominated to the court in 2005 by George W Bush, in the draft opinion dated 10 February.