"After the two abortion cases-Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton-were first argued in December 1971, Burger had assigned the opinions to Blackmun to write, for reasons that Blackmun never entirely understood. He has spent the previous thirteen months working on multiple drafts of the opinions, pressured by Justices Douglas, Brennan, and Stewart to change and expand the scope of the decisions. Chief Justice Burger, too, was concerned about the abortion decisions, but for different reasons. He was due to sweat in Richard Nixon for a second term as president on Saturday, January 20. Contrary to the president’s antiabortion position, the Court was about to strike down the abortion laws of all fifty states based on a broad “right of privacy” that was nowhere in the words of the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights. Despite his reputation as a :strict constructionist” that got him named Chief Justice, Burger was going to sign onto Blackmun’s opinion, along with a third Justice whom Nixon had named to the Court, Lewis Powell. Concerned that the decisions, joined by three Nixon-appointed Justices, would embarrass him or the president, Burger kept telling Blackmun that Burger was writing an additional, concurring opinion, which he was able to delay until after the inauguration. Having more than once shared with his colleagues his fears that the Court would be criticized for the decisions, Justice Blackmun crafted a statement that Tuesday explaining the decisions that he proposed to release to the press. But when Blackmun distributed the draft among his fellow Justices, Justice William Brennan, known as a liberal champion of the Court, warned him that the Justices didn’t issue “press releases” that might be confused with the written opinions they issued. So Blackmun simply read his statement from the bench on Monday, January 22."