This is the prescient warning Ruth Bader Ginsburg made about Roe v Wade

A leaked Supreme Court document, obtained by Politico, indicated that the legal right to abortion could be overturned.

The 1973 Roe v Wade decision made abortion legal in the United States. However, in the recent 98-page draft opinion, Justice Samuel Alito called it "egregiously wrong."

"Roe was egregiously wrong from the start," it read. "Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.

"And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division."

The opinions of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, lawyer and Supreme Court jurist who served from 1993 to 2020, have now resurfaced.

People have suggested her warnings about Roe v Wade come true. Ginsburg was a pioneering advocate for women's rights, though she critiqued how the decision for abortion as a constitutional right was established.

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In her famous 1992 lecture at New York University, Ginsburg warned against major judicial shifts, citing Roe as an example. "Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped...may prove unstable," she said.

"Measured motions seem to me right, in the main, for constitutional as well as common law adjudication," she argued. "Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable. The most prominent example in recent decades is Roe v. Wade."

Ginsburg added: "Suppose the Court had stopped there, rightly declaring unconstitutional the most extreme brand of law in the nation, and had not gone on, as the Court did in Roe, to fashion a regime blanketing the subject, a set of rules that displaced virtually every state law then in force.

"A less encompassing Roe, one that merely struck down the extreme Texas law and went no further on that day, I believe and will summarise why, might have served to reduce rather than to fuel controversy."

Should the precedent be overturned, US states would be required to implement rules for women seeking abortions.

According to Guttmacher Institute's data, 26 states would likely ban or limit abortions based on prior laws or the state's attitude toward abortions.

This includes Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Montana, Nebraska, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

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