Alito’s former Princeton classmate calls draft SCOTUS opinion ‘a greatest hits of misogyny’
By Chandelis Duster, CNN
Susan Squier, a former classmate of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito at Princeton University and who organized a letter protesting a leaked draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, on Thursday said she was stunned and called it “a greatest hits of misogyny.”
“When I read the document — I read all 98 pages of it, and mind you, I’m trained as a scholar of literature and medicine, and I look at nuance. And when I saw that he had smuggled into the document the wording from the Mississippi Gestational Age Act, which, as I understand it — now I’m not a lawyer — but isn’t even law yet. And he was referring to unborn children rather than fetuses. I was just stunned,” Squier told CNN’s John Berman on “New Day.” “I mean, I have read a lot of medical history going back for doing literature and medicine, and his is like a greatest hits of misogyny.”
She continued, “He doesn’t consider the context. And this man was a historian at Princeton. He was a double major in history and Poli sci. But it is as if he doesn’t believe history actually involves a record of things changing. Instead, it is history as, ‘let’s go back to the Salem witch trials.’ It makes me so angry.”
The sharp criticism from Squier adds to the outrage and protests over the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion that was authored by Alito that would overturn Roe v. Wade.
Squier and a group of female classmates who were part of the conservative justice’s 1972 undergraduate class at Princeton University penned a letter protesting the leaked draft opinion.
“We, the undersigned Princeton women of ’72, have been deeply shocked by the leaked Supreme Court draft authored by our classmate Justice Samuel Alito,” the 28 women wrote in the letter published on Princeton Alumni Weekly. Six others signed the letter as “Friends of the Women of ’72.”
“We are about to celebrate our 50th reunion — half a century since we graduated from Princeton. As a pioneering class of Princeton women, we find it bitter indeed to see the draft Supreme Court opinion reverse the strides we thought we were making, as part of one of the first classes of Princeton women, towards a world of equity and fairness for women of all races and social and economic positions,” they said.
The letter also encourages others to protest, writing, “We ask our classmates, and the community of Princeton, to protest the logic that ties us to a constitutional originalism which resists any movement toward justice but, rather, moves us backwards.”
“We hang on a precipice, balanced between the draft opinion and the final Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade,” the women said. “The right to manage one’s own health and most intimate personal and family decisions without outside interference is at risk right now and should be preserved to ensure social justice for ourselves, for our classmates, and for the world Princeton purports to serve.”
CNN has reached out the Supreme Court and Princeton for comment.
Squier told Berman putting the letter together was a “very fast decision” and that they felt the urge to speak out for other women who would be most impacted if the landmark ruling is overturned.
“It is not that we’re doing this because we hope it will change things. I don’t know. Wouldn’t that be lovely? I don’t know, maybe. I’m not that naive, but there is a time when you just have to speak out,” she said. “And those of us who went to Princeton have a privilege of having gone there, we can get listened to. So, we have to speak for the women who cannot get listened to, the women who are going to be massively impacted — I hate that word — by this horrible new decision.”
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CNN’s Mary Kay Mallonee contributed to this report.
