Leaked draft Supreme Court abortion decision would overturn Roe v.

The Supreme Court is poised to overturn the constitutionally protected right to abortion ensured by the nearly 50-year-old Roe v. Wade decision, according to a leaked initial draft of the new opinion obtained by Politico.

The draft is written by Justice Samuel Alito, with the concurrence of at least four other conservative members of the Supreme Court.

“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled,” Alito wrote in the 98-page draft decision, which relates to Mississippi’s strict new abortion law, according to the report published Monday night.

The draft opinion referenced the 1992 ruling by the high court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which further cemented the constitutional protections for women.

“It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives,” the justice wrote in the draft published by Politico.

Alito also wrote, “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” the report said.

CNBC has been unable to confirm the authenticity of the draft opinion, which Politico said had been circulated among the justices in February, and to which the court’s three liberal members, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, are writing dissents.

It is unclear if there have been subsequent changes to the draft by Alito since it first circulated.

The draft opinion, if formally issued by the court before its term ends in about two months, would leave it to individual states to set any restrictions on when and how a woman could terminate their pregnancy.

It also would be a monumental victory for religious conservatives, who for decades have pushed states to adopt laws restricting abortion rights, and to get the Supreme Court to undo the Roe and Casey rulings.

But the news outlet noted that Supreme Court draft opinions are not set in stone, and that justices sometimes change their positions on a case after a copy of a draft is circulated among them.

Politico also noted that “no draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending. The unprecedented revelation is bound to intensify the debate over what was already the most controversial case on the docket this term.”

The highly respected Supreme Court news site SCOTUSblog tweeted: “It’s impossible to overstate the earthquake this will cause inside the Court, in terms of the destruction of trust among the Justices and staff. This leak is the gravest, most unforgivable sin.”

Politico’s executive editor, Dafna Linzer, wrote in an editor’s note that “after an extensive review process, we are confident of the authenticity of the draft.”

“This unprecedented view into the justices’ deliberations is plainly news of great public interest,” she wrote.

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