AARON LEWIS Defends Draft Opinion That Would Overturn Roe v. Wade: 'Stop Listening To The Lies'

STAIND frontman Aaron Lewis has defended the leaked draft opinion penned by Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito arguing that the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion ruling was "egregiously wrong from the start."

Nearly three weeks after Politico published the opinion, the outspoken conservative rocker addressed the prospect of SCOTUS overturning Roe during his May 18 concert at the Santander Arena in Reading, Pennsylvania.

He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "You guys wanna talk about Roe versus Wade for a second? So let's talk about that for a second, because that's a really fucking sensitive subject, ain't it?

"So, here's the deal: since 1973, Roe versus Wade has kept we the people from voting on abortion. That's it. That's fucking it. It doesn't make it legal; it doesn't make it illegal; it just keeps we the people from voting on it. That's all. That's it.

"Fucking stop listening to the lies," he continued. "The only thing that Roe versus Wade does is it keeps we the people from voting, whether in our own state we want it legal or illegal. It's our choice. If this is we the fucking people. It is not we that kisses the ring of our government; that is not what this fucking country is."

According to the Politico report, the draft was circulated in February. Alito was reportedly joined by justices Clarence Thomas and all three of former President Donald Trump's nominees — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — while justices Stephen Breyer, Elana Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor were working on dissents. It was unclear how Chief Justice John Roberts voted.

The 1973 Roe v. Wade court decision affirmed the right to receive an abortion under the 14th Amendment, ruling that abortions were constitutionally protected up until about 23 weeks when a fetus can typically live outside the womb.

In the 98-page draft, Alito said Roe was wrongly decided, saying the issue should be decided by politicians, not courts. If Roe is reversed, it would not federally outlaw abortion. However, it would shift the power to states to decide on the procedure's legality.

According to CNN, nearly half of the states have or will pass laws that ban abortion, while others have enacted strict measures regulating the procedure.

Thirteen states have so-called "trigger laws" in place, which would effectively ban abortions almost immediately upon Roe v. Wade being overturned. According to Axios, the restrictions that would follow Roe being struck down by the Supreme Court would mean almost 30% of people would be more than 200 miles away from an abortion provider.

According to a Forbes, Americans largely oppose harsh abortion laws, with 75% against policies that make it a criminal offense to perform an abortion, 69% opposing policies that ban abortion six to eight weeks into a pregnancy, 80% opposing laws that allow private citizens to sue anyone who aids or abets an abortion and 63% supporting "safe haven laws" in Democratic-led states that would protect people who travel in from other states to get an abortion.

Critics have said that tossing out the landmark rulings establishing abortion rights would tarnish the court's reputation and open the floodgates to other challenges to well-settled law.