Slate's Dahlia Lithwick didn't expect to be talking about a Supreme Court opinion this week.

She was off to a conference.

But then, you know, my phone started going ping, ping, ping, ping, ping.

And like most people, I just, I really thought my first impulse was Politico got worked.

Like, it's just not possible because this has never happened.

And the leaked opinion that Politico dropped this week is big.

Justice Samuel Alito, arguing that Roe v. Wade, the precedent that makes getting an abortion

legal in this country, should be overturned.

To see a 98-page draft opinion with all the appendices, with the stamp of the court on it

in advance of a decision day is absolutely unprecedented.

Yeah, it was a tremendous flex to drop the entire draft opinion because you can't look at it

and not think like, oh, yeah, that's that's a draft opinion. Yeah. I want to be really clear. I mean, I've known Josh Gerstein for a long time.

Josh Gerstein, he's the guy who reported this.

He's one of the two at Politico who published it. And after my first thought, which was,

this can't be true, was if Josh has it, you know, this is a credible enough source for me.

And as you say, once you looked at it, this was meticulously researched, this is not, you know,

if somebody was doing a deep fake, this was an extraordinary deep fake.

Dear listener, this was not a deep fake.

The Supreme Court confirmed that this opinion, while not final, is the

real deal drawn up back in February and passed around the court. It decides a case called Dobbs

versus Jackson Women's Health. It upholds Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban.

These first draft opinions are like opening bids, right?

...