US President Joe Biden (File image)

Photo : AP

Washington DC: A day after a draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito surfaced online, United States President Joe Biden on Tuesday urged the voters of the country to defend access to abortion. Biden described the leaked draft as “radical”.

Notably, the leaked draft of the Supreme Court ruling showed a majority opinion against the “abortion” right. The US President also warned of the implications of the draft ruling. He said that the ruling could lead to widespread changes in American law as “every other decision relating to the notion of privacy is thrown into question,” reported news agency AFP.

The US President also urged the Congress to protect the “right to abortion”. Biden told reporters, “It concerns me a great deal that we’re going to, after 50 years, decide a woman does not have a right to choose.”

Notably, the US Supreme Court confirmed that the 98-page leaked draft ruling was authentic. However, it also said that it was not the final ruling. The draft majority opinion termed the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision protecting the right to abortion as “egregiously wrong from the start.”

Alito, in the draft, wrote that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The document, labelled as “Opinion of the Court”, was published on Politico’s website on Monday. Senior Democrats also denounced the SC’s apparent move to overturn abortion rights.

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a joint statement, said, “If the report is accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past fifty years — not just on women but on all Americans.”

In the Roe v. Wade case, the apex court of the US ruled that access to abortion is a constitutional right.