When versioning is turned on, it's possible to hide drafts, either from everyone except the creator or just from users without edit rights. When presenting items from lists, either in custom solutions or using the built-in list webpart, this means that the general viewer may be presented with a different view than a user who is responsible for creating or checking content.

In order to display a consistent "end user experience", we have to manually fetch a specific version (the latest version that has _ModerationStatus eq 0). In the built-in list view webparts, this isn't even an option.

Drafts are already hidden from users without edit rights on the lists in use. Therefore it would be useful to have this filtering as a simple option when fetching items using the REST API.