Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham condemned the leaking of a draft Supreme Court opinion in the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, and hammered the far-left for pushing radical policies in response.
In a statement Tuesday, Graham said that the “radical Left is hell-bent” on imposing radical reforms on institutions that stand in the way of their agenda, like packing the Supreme Court, abolishing the filibuster, and instituting a federal takeover of elections.
“It is a sad day for the Supreme Court and a dangerous day for the Rule of Law,” Graham said. “The radical assault on our institutions and the Constitution itself has reached a new level with the release of a draft opinion on a major issue facing the Court. Whether you are a liberal, conservative or moderate, the integrity of the Court has been compromised by this outrageous act – an affront to the Rule of Law. For over two hundred years, the Supreme Court has been able to deliberate and build consensus without its decisions being compromised in this manner. This has been forever changed by this leak.”
A draft of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson was leaked to Politico Monday, indicating that the Court is in position to overturn Roe v. Wade. Politico described the opinion as a “full-throated, unflinching repudiation of [Roe v. Wade] which guaranteed federal constitutional protections of abortion rights and a subsequent 1992 decision – Planned Parenthood v. Casey – that largely maintained the right.” In the opinion, Justice Samuel Alito contends that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start” and holds that it must be overturned, with the issue of legalizing abortion sent back to the states to determine.
Graham also responded to calls from far-left Democrats in Congress for the Court to be expanded and for the filibuster to be broken in order to ram through legislation codifying the right to abortion into law. “In America, the radical Left is hell-bent on reshaping institutions that have stood in the way of the outcomes they desire,” Graham said. “They want to pack the Supreme Court to change the current conservative nature of the Court which was achieved through the democratic process. They intend to abolish the Electoral College to shift power away from rural states to large, blue states. They would also have a federal takeover of our state election systems and undermine election integrity. The radical Left is now calling for the end of the Senate filibuster as a response to the draft opinion being released publicly. This only compounds the problem. Why destroy the Senate after this outrage against the Supreme Court’s deliberative process? When it comes to outcomes, the radical Left will do whatever they view as necessary – institutions be damned.”
A number of prominent far-left Democrats, including Massachusetts Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor and U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman, issued renewed calls to abolish the filibuster and pack the Supreme Court in response to the leaked decision.
Graham ended his statement by praising the reported decision as a win for the Constitution. “If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, which I believe was one of the largest power grabs in the history of the Court, it means that every state will decide if abortion is legal and on what terms. That, in my view, is the most constitutionally sound way of dealing with this issue and the way the United States handled the issue until 1973.”