According to CNN, the draft opinion, obtained and authenticated by Politico, heralds what would be a massive victory for the conservative movement decades in the making.

It set off immediate condemnation and calls for action from leading liberal and medical groups and Democratic leaders, as well as protests outside the Supreme Court building.

The bombshell concerns a draft majority opinion, written by conservative Justice Samuel Alito, which slammed the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision enshrining the right to an abortion as wrongly decided.

It was circulated in early February 2022, but the final opinion isn’t expected to be published until late June. Votes and language can change before opinions are formally released.

The document’s authenticity has not yet been independently verified and a Supreme Court spokesperson declined to comment to CNN.

But if the high court follows through on such a decision in the coming weeks, it would engineer a massive shift in American life and law — and provide a startling sign of just how fundamentally the conservative majority, solidified by former President Donald Trump, will change society in the decades to come. It would potentially cast into doubt all kinds of precedents and past court rulings that have been regarded as settled law for years.

If the final decision is issued along the lines of Alito’s draft, millions of American women could have a fundamental right, which many have known all of their lives, taken away. But millions of people who believe that life begins at conception would celebrate such a ruling.

There will be weeks of debate about the legal reasoning and implications behind Alito’s draft opinion.

But in practice, such a ruling would seem likely to send the issue back to the states. That might mean abortion would be quickly banned by state legislatures in Republican-run states but remain legal in

Democratic-run states. Such a scenario would further drive a schism between two halves of the country, which has been exacerbated by increasingly polarized politics in recent years.

The emergence of the draft is also stunning in itself. It represents a major and likely unprecedented breach in court confidentiality that is almost certain to worsen the politicization of the court, which has been dragged deeper into partisanship since it decided the 2000 election in favor of George W. Bush over then-Vice President Al Gore and has only accelerated ever since.

The draft also opened an unexpected new dimension to the midterm election campaign. The drama could stoke turnout in November for both parties.

For now, it validates the decision of social conservatives to stick with Trump after he vowed to nominate justices that would overturn the constitutional right to abortion despite reservations about his moral conduct.