PRO-CHOICE activists were livid today and President Joe Biden called on politicians to protect a woman’s right to choose after a leaked Supreme Court opinion suggested federal abortion rights could be scrapped this summer.

A document labelled a first draft of an opinion on a challenge to an abortion ban in Mississippi, which will be ruled on late next month or early in July, suggests the conservative majority on the Supreme Court intends to overturn the famous Roe v Wade judgement of 1973, that pregnant US women have a constitutional right to terminate their pregnancies “without excessive government restriction.”

The provenance of the document, published by the Politico website, has not been confirmed, but the Supreme Court declined to disown it. Signed by Justice Samuel Alito, it says that “Roe and Casey” (a related 1992 ruling) “must be overruled. It is time ... to return the issue of abortion to the people’s elected representatives.”

Since the Mississippi case went to court, US states have been rushing to legislate to ban or protect the right to terminate a pregnancy, depending on their political leadership. Eight states still have pre-Roe abortion bans on their statutes that could be enforced if the court strikes down the landmark judgement.

President Biden declared today that “basic fairness and the stability of our law demand” that the Supreme Court maintain Roe v Wade, but said if it was overturned “it will fall on our nation’s elected officials at all levels to protect a woman’s right to choose.

“And it will fall on voters to elect pro-choice officials this November,” he added, referring to the next US mid-term elections to Congress. “We will need more pro-choice senators and a pro-choice majority in the House [of Representatives] to adopt legislation that codifies Roe.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, both Democrats, issued a joint statement saying: “If accurate, the Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years — not just on women but on all Americans.”

Activist group Women’s March said it was “horrified, sad and livid” and called for nationwide demonstrations.