The New York Times reports that, rather than stop the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the infamous leak of the court's Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Clinic case actually facilitated the overturning of Roe. 

That's right: if the leaker or leakers thought that leaking the Dobbs decision would protect Roe, they were wrong. It did the exact opposite.

Roe, of course, is the case in which the Supreme Court, several decades back, discovered that the U.S. Constitution contains a right to have an abortion.

Dobbs is the much more recent case in which the current justices of the Supreme Court found that the U.S. Constitution does not contain such a right. Accordingly, the justices returned the controversial abortion issue back to the people and their state legislatures, where many believe that such issues belong.

The Dobbs decision was officially released in June 2022. But, it was leaked several months earlier. This led to an intense backlash in which the Supreme Court's conservative members were targeted. And, many also believe that the leak also led to the Republican Party's disappointing performance in the 2022 midterm elections.

We, the American people, still do know who the leaker(s) is. The Supreme Court has investigated the situation, but the investigation - so the court claims - failed to identify the culprit.

Now, a new report from the Times indicates that the leak ensured the overturning of Roe. 

What the Times report claims is that not all conservative members of the Supreme Court were initially on board with overturning Roe. In fact, the report claims that Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not want the court to even hear the Dobbs case.

The report also claims that Justice Samuel Alito was the driving force behind the effort to overturn Roe and that Chief Justice John Roberts wanted to reach a compromise with the court's liberal contingent on the abortion issue.

But, then, the leak happened, and, according to the Times, it united the court's conservative members.

Per the Times: 

The most glaring irregularity was the leak to Politico of Justice Alito’s draft. The identity and motive of the person who disclosed it remains unknown, but the effect of the breach is clear: It helped lock in the result, The Times found, undercutting Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Breyer’s quest to find a middle ground.

If you believe that a member of the political left leaked the case, then you may see this as justice.

But, now, some are trying to claim that the Times' report actually supports the theory that a member of the political left leaked the opinion. The idea is that since the leak "helped lock in the result" and since the result was the overturning of Roe, then, obviously, the political right must be behind the leak.

We'll leave it to you, the reader, to decide which theory makes more sense.