Leaked abortion draft made us ‘targets of assassination’, Samuel Alito says

Samuel Alito said the decision he wrote removing the federal right to abortion made him and other US supreme court justices "targets of assassination" but denied claims he was responsible for its leak in draft form.

"Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination," Alito told the Wall Street Journal in an interview published on Friday.

"It was rational for people to believe they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us."

Alito wrote the ruling in Dobbs v Jackson, the Mississippi case that overturned Roe v Wade, which established the right to abortion in 1973.

Alito's draft ruling was leaked to Politico on 2 May last year, to uproar and protest nationwide. The final ruling was issued on 24 June.

On 8 June, an armed man was arrested outside the home of Brett Kavanaugh, with Alito one of six conservatives on the nine-justice court. Charged with attempted murder of a United States judge, the man pleaded not guilty.

The conservative chief justice, John Roberts, voted against overturning Roe, but the three rightwingers installed by Republicans under Donald Trump ensured it fell regardless.