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Texans react with everything from joy to anger over possible end to Roe v. Wade

A leaked draft opinion shows a majority of justices are ready to overturn the landmark decision.

DALLAS — Meagan Gross is now 30 years old.

But she clearly remembers being a scared, pregnant 20-year-old with no support and no money.

But she did have a choice.

“I had an abortion,” Gross said. 

“Having that choice was paramount for me. If I were to have had a child back then, I don’t think I would have been able to give my child or myself the future that we both deserved to have.”

Gross became more comfortable opening up about her abortion in the last couple of years as she felt access to abortions was being cut, particularly in Texas.

She lives in North Texas and her abortion was performed in Texas in 2012.

Roe v. Wade, the 49-year-old U.S. Supreme Court case that originated in Dallas, gave Gross the legal right to choose.

But that case could be in its final weeks or even days.

A draft opinion written in February and leaked to the online publication Politico this week shows a majority of justices support overturning the case.

Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed the draft is authentic.

The leak was called a “stunning breach,” by republican Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a former Supreme Court clerk himself.

“Very little renders me speechless,” Cruz said of the leak.  “I was flabbergasted.”

The leak angered him, but the draft opinion did not.

“The fundamental obligation of government, I believe, is to protect people’s rights and in this case that includes the rights of the unborn child,” Cruz said.

If the final opinion from the court mirrors the draft, abortion will not suddenly become illegal, Cruz said.

“Rather the consequences will be that each state will decide. For the first 185 years of our country’s history that is how questions of abortions were decided,” he said.

The draft indicates conservative members of the Supreme Court believe elected lawmakers of individual states should decide abortion access, not justices sitting on the highest court in the land.

Gross is now mother to a 21-month-old child.

Of the abortion she had a decade ago she said, “It’s not a decision any woman wants to make.”

But she believes it’s a decision all women should be able to make.

While she believes the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade will hurt women, advocates for an end to abortion say women have more options now than ever.

“This is not our mother’s 1973 or our mother’s Roe,” said Chelsea Youman, Texas State Director and National Legislative Advisor for the Human Coalition.

“We're talking about very robust infrastructure in place for this moment in time,” Youman said. “Society is ready to protect innocent life in the womb - humans in the womb - who are growing and developing. They're just really small humans, and so we're ready for this.”

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