1
INTHESTREETS
PRIMALSCREAMING
L
ast Tuesday afternoon, less than
twenty-four hours after a leaked
Supreme Court draft opinion indicated
that the fight to protect Roe v. Wade
would soon suffer an epochal defeat,
New Yorkers began showing up at Foley
Square, in lower Manhattan. “CHAN-
NEL YOUR RAGE INTO ACTION,” an an-
nouncement shared on social media read.
“WEAR GREEN.” The threat to Roe had
been a slow build, but the suddenness
of the leak meant that the protest was
marked by improvisation. People wore
green bandannas, hoodies—whatever
was in their closets—and carried signs
bearing Sharpie’d slogans, ranging from
the succinct (“RAGE”) to the specific (“I
SURVIVED AN ILLEGAL ABORTION in
Birmingham Ala. in 1969 #NeverAgain”).
Helicopters buzzed overhead.
“It’s scary that something we relied
on for fifty years can be taken away,” alaw student named Savannah, who held
a drawing of a coat hanger, said. Al-
though demonstrators knew that the
fall of Roe was unlikely to impinge on
abortion rights in New York State, that
was little comfort. “I’ll probably be fine,
but this type of stuff always hurts peo-
ple who don’t have access to health care,”
a woman named Morgan said, holding
a sign made from a box her mother had
sent her containing natural deodorants.
But the reality of reproductive rights
wasn’t just hypothetical; it was personal
and cross-generational. In a group of
four thirtysomething women, one had
had an abortion and another had ac-
companied a friend to a clinic. Daniele,
in a green turtleneck, had texted friends
who play in a band with her (“twee-in-
flected feminist K Records-y pop”), hop-
ing, since the Supreme Court’s opinion
was still a draft, that “if we really scare
the shit out of them they’ll change their
minds.” Her bandmate Tasha, who wore
a green beret borrowed from Daniele
and works at an art museum, had in-
vited a co-worker and left work early:
“Our boss was very supportive. She said,
‘Bring everyone.’ ”
Nearby, a man named Jonathan Walker
wore a pink pussyhat, from the 2017 Wom-
en’s March. “My wife couldn’t be here.
I’m wearing her hat,” he said. Both are
actors; his wife was doing a Zoom read-
ing of a Charles Busch play. Walker’s
grandmother volunteered for the birth-
control advocate Margaret Sanger a hun-
dred years ago, and when he was a teen-
ager, in the seventies, his mother had an1973, Time published his article, predict-
ing that the Court was about to legal-
ize abortion.
In scheduling his story, Beckwith had
been guided by an anonymous source,
who asked him to hold off until after
January 17th, when the decision was
slated to be announced. But then Burger
unexpectedly delayed again: he was about
to preside over Nixon’s second Inaugu-
ration, and, Beckwith surmised, he was
so afraid to stand face to face with Nixon,
who opposed abortion rights, that he
postponed the Roe announcement until
the week after. Time, though, printed
Beckwith’s article as planned, scooping
the Court on its own decision.
Today, such news would have broken
the Internet, as the Alito leak did. But
Beckwith said that not even the New
York Times picked up his story. One Time
subscriber who did notice the piece was
Justice Harry Blackmun. He was the au-
thor of the Roe decision, and he was fu-
rious that he had been preëmpted before
he could announce the decision that he
had anticipated would be the apex of his
legal career. (He was further upstaged by
Lyndon Johnson, who died the same day
that the Roe decision was announced.)
“Blackmun lit a fire under Burger,”
Beckwith said. The Chief Justice sum-
moned the top editors of Time to Wash-
ington to discuss the leak, and Burger,
out for blood, presented them with a
three-inch-thick binder detailing all of
Beckwith’s contacts with Supreme
Court personnel.
Although Beckwith said that his in-
vestigation had taken “a lot of shoe
leather,” one Court clerk, Larry Ham-
mond, a law-school classmate of Beck-
with’s, confessed to the Justices, think-
ing that he had been the only source.
“He took the hit, poor guy,” Beckwith
said. Hammond was forgiven by the
Justices, including Burger, and went on
to a distinguished legal career.
Burger, in his meeting with Time’s
editors, had demanded that Beckwith
be fired for “espionage.” Instead, the ed-
itors realized just what an industrious
journalist they had. Beckwith stayed at
Time until 1989.
After decades of reporting, Beckwith
became an aide to conservative politi-
cians, including former Vice-President
Dan Quayle. He is not a fan of the Roe
decision, and he worries that the recent “ You’ve got something in your teeth.”
leak of Alito’s draft opinion was aimed
at influencing the outcome of the case
in a way that his own story was not.
“But I’m still enough of a reporter to
say the more information out there, the
better,” he said. “Good for the guys who
got the story.”
—Jane Mayer