--- title: Inside the Original Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Leak From 1973 description: In 1973, TIME got a scoop on the news of the Roe v. Wade decision. Here's what the reporter behind the story, David C. Beckwith, remembers. canonical: https://time.com/6173058/supreme-court-leak-history-david-beckwith/ author: Olivia B. Waxman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2022-05-03T20:57:50.000Z article:modified_time: 2024-01-24T11:07:59.000Z article:section: History og:title: Inside the Original Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Leak From 1973 og:description: In 1973, TIME got a scoop on the news of the Roe v. Wade decision. Here's what the reporter behind the story, David C. Beckwith, remembers. og:url: https://time.com/6173058/supreme-court-leak-history-david-beckwith/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6e92132c27f2b7df/698a318c47ca38294b3b98e6/abortion-roe-v-wade-supreme-court-06.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: Russia Sanctions Bill Moves Closer In Senate Ahead Of Briefings og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Inside the Original Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Leak From 1973 twitter:description: In 1973, TIME got a scoop on the news of the Roe v. Wade decision. Here's what the reporter behind the story, David C. Beckwith, remembers. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt6e92132c27f2b7df/698a318c47ca38294b3b98e6/abortion-roe-v-wade-supreme-court-06.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Inside the Original _Roe v. Wade_ Supreme Court Leak, 49 Years Before the Alito Bombshell > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME Subscription: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition TIME is a general-interest news organization founded in 1923, reporting on the people, ideas and issues shaping the world. A TIME subscription provides full access to that journalism in print and digital, from $20 a year, and can be cancelled at any time. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Updated: Jan 24, 2024 11:07 AM UTCPublished: May 3, 2022 8:57 PM UTC  The Supreme Court in Washington on Jan. 31, 2022. The Supreme Court in Washington on Jan. 31, 2022.Al Drago—Bloomberg/Getty Images  by [Olivia B. Waxman](https://time.com/author/olivia-b-waxman/)  ## Olivia B. Waxman Staff Writer Updated: Jan 24, 2024 11:07 AM UTCPublished: May 3, 2022 8:57 PM UTC The leak [to Politico on Monday](https://www.politico.com/news/2022/05/02/supreme-court-abortion-draft-opinion-00029473) of a draft of an opinion by a majority of U.S. Supreme Court Justices that would overturn _Roe_ v. _Wade_ has been called “unprecedented” in the modern history of the Court—but it’s not the first time a Supreme Court decision has been made public before its official release. This week’s leak comes 49 years after TIME first published the news of the original _Roe v. Wade_ decision, which ruled that a woman’s constitutional right to privacy included decisions about [whether to terminate a pregnancy](https://time.com/6116072/mississippi-abortion-supreme-court-jackson-womens-health/). TIME called up the reporter behind the 1973 story, David C. Beckwith, who is now retired and living in Austin. He landed the scoop about a year into working at TIME, covering legal affairs and the Department of Justice. He says he talked to about 15 people for the story, including a clerk for Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. named [Larry Hammond](https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/azcentral/name/larry-hammond-obituary?id=2122832), and that he had no problem getting people to talk to him about the case, though he did find people were “nervous” at first. “I talked to a lot of people—some on the court, some clerks, some friends of people that were either clerks or court members,” says Beckwith, now 79. **_Read more:_** [Roe v. Wade _Lawyer ‘Amazed’ Americans Still Fighting Over Abortion_](https://time.com/5110210/roe-v-wade-anniversary-abortion/) The resulting article, headlined “Abortion on Demand,” ran in the Jan. 29, 1973, issue, in the section “The Sexes.” “Last week TIME learned that the Supreme Court has decided to strike down nearly every anti-abortion law in the land,” the article [reported](https://time.com/vault/issue/1973-01-29/page/50/). “Such laws, a majority of the Justices believe, represent an unconstitutional invasion of privacy that interferes with a woman’s right to control her own body.” As [TIME explained the significance of the decision](https://time.com/vault/issue/1973-01-29/page/50/) back then: --- > “” --- The magazine’s story was supposed to come out after the decision came down, but the decision was delayed, so the issue ended up [hitting newsstands a few hours before the ruling was announced](https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/05/02/leak-time-magazine-roe-wade/) on Jan. 22, 1973. Beckwith remembers getting some pushback to the article shortly after it came out; Chief Justice Warren E. Burger showed up at TIME’s Washington Bureau. Editors flew down from the New York headquarters in a private plane, and Beckwith escorted them in a limo to a dinner meeting with Burger. “Burger showed up at the TIME offices a month or two after the decision was announced \[and\] he had a loose-leaf binder, three inches thick, detailing all the reporting I’d done,” Beckwith says. “He feared that the integrity of the court was being jeopardized, and he wanted me to be fired or to be ordered not to spy on the court. He thought \[the story\] was the equivalent of espionage. His position was this sort of espionage on the court was damaging to the court and to the country and that \[he\] couldn’t have a situation where this sort of thing happened again—it could affect the stock market, it could affect all sorts of things. And he tried to get some sort of promise, and he couldn’t believe that the TIME editors didn’t see it his way.” Nearly five decades later, the court is again concerned about the integrity of the institution: having [confirmed](https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/03/us/roe-wade-abortion-supreme-court) the authenticity of the latest leaked draft, written by Justice Samuel Alito, the court has launched an investigation into the identity of the leaker. The opinion is not the final draft, and the content could still change, but Beckwith, for one, agrees with what he’s seen. (Some legal scholars, [on the other hand](https://time.com/6172956/consequences-overruling-roe-wade/), have read the Alito draft as a dangerous break with precedent.) “I’m kind of old school…I found, from my reading of the Alito decision, that it’s a tour de force,” Beckwith says he believes. “It’s really hard to argue with much of what he says, from a constitutional law standpoint. We all have our political opinions that divide us, these days especially, but if you believe that the Constitution should be the lodestar for our jurisprudence, Alito is hitting all the right notes, and I just don’t see much that can be argued with it.” After TIME, Beckwith worked in Republican politics for Dan Quayle, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and John Cornyn. **Read more:** [A Case That Could Overturn _Roe v. Wade_ Goes Before the Supreme Court](https://time.com/6122144/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-mississippi-abortion/) Beckwith also understands why the 2022 leak is making a much greater splash than his own work made in 1973. “The impact of my story was much less, much less, because while it was seen as a technical leak from the court, it was immediately overtaken by the actual decision itself within a day,” says Beckwith. The decision came out on Jan. 22, 1973, two days after Inauguration Day, and there was a reason for that, Beckwith says. “According to the rumor I got,” he says, “Burger didn’t want to face \[President Richard\] Nixon on the inauguration stand with that decision having just come out.” [_Read TIME’s 1973 story on the_ Roe v. Wade _decision in the TIME Vault_](https://time.com/vault/issue/1973-01-29/page/50/) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6173058/supreme-court-leak-history-david-beckwith/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6173058/supreme-court-leak-history-david-beckwith/"},"headline":"Inside the Original Roe v. Wade Supreme Court Leak, 49 Years Before the Alito Bombshell","datePublished":"2022-05-03T20:57:50.000Z","dateModified":"2024-01-24T11:07:59.000Z","description":"In 1973, TIME got a scoop on the news of the Roe v. Wade decision. Here's what the reporter behind the story, David C. 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