Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett believes repealing Roe v Wade did not make abortion illegal — it gave the power to decide to the states.
Barrett spoke about the controversial decision in an interview Sunday with CBS’s Norah O’Donnell, Mediaite reported.
“The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs gave that decision to the democratic process and to the states,” Barrett said in her first television interview since joining the court five years ago. “It didn’t roll back rights. It didn’t render abortion illegal, unconstitutional, or anything else. And in effect, many states very fully protected abortion rights, more than under the regime of Roe since the time of the decision in Dobbs.”
The Dobbs decision occurred in 2022 and overturned Roe v. Wade, which gave women the right to an abortion in all 50 states. Barrett voted in the 6-3 majority.
O’Donnell countered by saying, “But it rolled back a federal right to abortion. A constitutional right to an abortion.”
Barrett said abortion is not a constitutional right.
“Well, what it said is that the Constitution had not protected the abortion right under the Due Process Clause. And it said that Roe had been an error and Casey had been an error to hold otherwise,” she said.
The 1992 Casey decision reaffirmed the right to abortion.
It, however, added an “undue burden” standard. This was meant to even out a woman’s right to choose with states’ rights to protect the unborn.
She added that the Supreme Court is not an opinion poll, per CBS News.
“You know, what the court is trying to do is see what the American people have decided. And sometimes the American people have expressed themselves in the Constitution itself, which is our fundamental law. Sometimes in statutes,” she said. “But the court should not be imposing its own values on the American people. That’s for the democratic process.”
Given the controversy of the Dobbs decision, Barrett got a bulletproof vest, which she then had to explain to her children the need for it, Mediaite reported.
