In this week’s leaked draft of a Supreme Court opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, Justice Samuel Alito wrote, “The inescapable conclusion is that a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the Nation’s history and traditions.” Yet abortion was so “deeply rooted” in colonial America that one of our nation’s most influential architects went out of his way to insert it into the most widely and enduringly read and reprinted math textbook of the colonial Americas—and he received so little pushback or outcry for the inclusion that historians have barely noticed it is there. Abortion was simply a part of life, as much as reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Alito’s draft opinion includes, in small type, a list of about two pages’ worth of decisions in which the justices overruled prior precedents – in many instances reaching results praised by liberals.

Alito approvingly quotes a broad range of critics of the Roe decision. He also points to liberal icons such as the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, who at certain points in their careers took issue with the reasoning in Roe or its impact on the political process.