WATCH: Leaked SCOTUS Opinion May Have Doomed Roe Debate

When the leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion showed support for overturning the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade, conservatives began a campaign of suggesting that it must be a liberal clerk who’d released the document, with the intent of inviting public pressure to change the decision before it became official. Now there’s new support for the alternative theory.

Certainly the massive backlash against the court could have been the intended outcome of the leak, but another possibility was quickly raised. Once the document had been read, and the public had made its objections known, any change in the most concerning element of the Dobbs decision — the overturn of Roe v. Wade — would be seen as the court ‘backing down’ or ‘giving in’ to pressure.

Now CNN has new coverage that supports this further — Chief Justice John Roberts was reportedly trying to convince the rest of the bench to keep Roe in place, but the argument was essentially lost after the leak.

“It went down to the wire, according to my sources, but in the end, [Roberts] made no headway…the thing that happened that, as I said, really thwarted things, was when it was clear to the public how Justice Kavanaugh and Justice Barrett had voted. It locked them in…”

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The public display of disapproval has not stopped since the official decision. There have been protests, and some more violent responses, resulting in Congressbeing called upon to pass legislation providing the Justices with additional protection. NBC reported in June that legislation had been successfully passed to provide security for the families of Justices, after a man was arrested outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in possession of a gun, a knife, and burglary tools. He said that he was targeting the Justice because of the Roe decision.