What We Already Know
By In one of the least surprising developments is history, an Alito memo in which he argued that Roe v. Wade should be overturned has been released:
Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito wrote in a June 1985 memo that the landmark Roe v. Wade ruling legalizing abortion should be overturned, a finding certain to enliven January’s confirmation hearings.
In a recommendation to the solicitor general on filing a friend-of-court brief, Alito said that the government ”should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade and would welcome the opportunity to brief the issue of whether, and if so to what extent, that decision should be overruled.”
The June 3, 1985 document was one of 45 released by the National Archives on Friday. A total of 744 pages were made public.
[…]
Consistent with his previous writings, Alito said these arguments would be preferable to a ”frontal assault on Roe v. Wade.”
”It has most of the advantage of a brief devoted to the overruling of Roe v. Wade; it makes our position clear, does not even tacitly concede Roe’s legitimacy, and signals that we regard the question as live and open,” Alito wrote.
To address one of the spin-points we’ll be hearing as part of the Alito Kabuki, this is his personal before-the-fact analysis, not a brief where he was just putting the government’s position forward.
But it should be noted, of course, that this isn’t telling us anything we don’t already know. Alito’s personal hostility to legal abortion rights is well-known and unambiguous. As an appeals court judge, in the only abortion case not decided on technical grounds or in which he was not bound by a clear upper-court precedent he ruled in a way that would maximize state power, and used a legal rationale that would not only increase the regulatory power of the state but would make challenging the regulations in court far more ornerous. His hostility to abortion rights couldn’t be clearer; it’s only people who want to maintain their bullshit-libertarian credentials or need to ram Alito through the Senate despite his unpopular views who are trying to pretend that there’s any serious doubt about his stance. This is one more piece of evidence added to a case that was already utterly clear-cut. If you support Alito, you either oppose or don’t care about reproductive rights, period.