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WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Vice President Kamala Harris bitterly denounced pro-life Republicans on Tuesday to an audience of pro-abortion activists in the wake of a leaked draft opinion indicating the U.S. Supreme Court might be on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade.

Last December, the Court began consideration off Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which concerned Mississippi’s HB 1510 law banning abortions from being committed past 15 weeks for any reason other than physical medical emergencies or severe fetal abnormalities. After the law’s enactment in 2019, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals deemed it unconstitutional because of an “unbroken line dating to Roe,” the 1973 ruling that imposed on all 50 states a “right” to pre-viability abortion.

On Monday evening, Politico published a leak of what appeared to be a draft of a majority opinion written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito declaring that “Roe was egregiously wrong from the start,” and therefore it is “time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.” On Tuesday morning, the Court announced the draft was authentic but “does not represent a final decision by the court or the final position of any member on the issues in the case.”

It remains unclear whether the draft represents a final decision to overturn Roe, a tentative decision subject to change, was prepared in anticipation of a majority to overturn, or was written in hopes of persuading Alito’s colleagues to sign on. Regardless, the leak has sent shock waves across the political spectrum, with pro-lifers tentatively rejoicing, pro-abortion politicians and activists lashing out in anger, and many speculating that the leak may have been intended to pressure judges to flip their votes, or to incite hatred and threats against them.

“Some Republican leaders are trying to weaponize the use of the law against women. How dare they?” Harris declared during a conference for the pro-abortion group EMILY’s List, Politico reported. “How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body? How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?”

“Which party wants to expand our rights? And which party wants to restrict them? It has never been more clear,” Harris claimed. “Which party wants to lead us forward? And which party wants to push us back? You know, some Republican leaders, they want to take us back to a time before Roe v. Wade.”

“At its core, Roe recognizes the fundamental right to privacy,” she claimed. “Think about that for a minute. When the right to privacy is attacked, anyone in our country may face a future where the government can interfere in their personal decisions. Not just women. Anyone.”

“Let us fight for our country and for the principles upon which it was founded, and let us fight with everything we have got,” the vice president implored the crowd.

Harris’ remarks, which follow similar rhetoric from other Democrat leaders including President Joe Biden and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, invoke several common pro-abortion tropes, such as misrepresenting the issue as exclusively about women’s bodies to the exclusion of the preborn children they carry; suggesting that a right to personal privacy can encompass a right to harm others; insinuating that women can’t lead successful lives without abortion; alluding to revisionist history about pre-Roe America; and falsely suggesting that legal abortion has roots in the American founding.

Notably, the vice president’s remarks also failed to incorporate one of the newest tropes of left-wing orthodoxy, which is that pregnancy is no longer exclusively the province of women according to transgender ideology.

If Alito’s opinion does prove to be the Supreme Court’s final decision, its ramifications will be drastic. More than 20 states currently have laws on the books that would effectively ban abortion within their borders upon Roe’s fall, from pre-Roe abortion bans that went unenforced to “trigger laws” designed not to take effect until a ruling like today’s. In those states, abortion would become illegal as soon as the ruling is issued.

More than a dozen other states plus the District of Columbia have laws on the books legally protecting abortion, at least three of which explicitly codify the practice as a “right.” Abortion would remain legal in those jurisdictions, as well as the remaining states that have not spelled out abortion’s status one way or another, but without Roe state residents would have the power to vote on the issue for themselves, or lobby their elected representatives to change the law in either direction. Pro-lifers in Congress could pursue a nationwide abortion ban, as well.

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