Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett is standing firm on the Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization ruling, the decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and returned abortion policy to the states. In an interview with CBS’ Norah O’Donnell, Barrett rejected claims that Dobbs jeopardized broader rights and emphasized that the Constitution never empowered judges to set abortion policy in the first place.
“Dobbs did not render abortion illegal. Dobbs did not say anything about whether abortion is immoral,” Barrett explained. “Dobbs said that these are questions that are left to the states… those calls are properly left to the democratic process. And the states have been working those out. There’s been a lot of legislative activity and a lot of state constitutional activity since the decision in Dobbs was rendered.”
In her first television interview since joining the Supreme Court in October 2020, Justice Amy Coney Barrett discussed Roe v. Wade with CBS News’ @NorahODonnell and whether marriage and contraception might also be up for revision. They also discuss her new book, “Listening to the… pic.twitter.com/P9gKeC28vj
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O’Donnell pressed Barrett on the dissenting opinion written by Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and former Justice Stephen Breyer, which warned that Dobbs could invite challenges to contraception and IVF. Barrett pushed back, noting that such medical questions are not constitutional matters for the Court to decide.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett gives her first interview since joining SCOTUS in 2020 and offers insight into her Roe v Wade decision. pic.twitter.com/bvkec4IAIO
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The interview also touched on the left’s broader anxieties. O’Donnell cited Hillary Clinton’s prediction that Dobbs could foreshadow the Court overturning same-sex marriage rights. Barrett brushed the warning aside: “I think people who criticize the Court who are outside say a lot of different things. But… we have to tune those things out.”
Barrett, appointed by President Donald Trump in October 2020 to succeed the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is promoting her forthcoming book Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution. In excerpts released by The Free Press, she underscores that judges must suppress personal views in favor of the law enacted by the people:
“On the bench, we must suppress our individual beliefs in deference to those that have prevailed in the enacted law. Our job is to protect the choices that citizens have made, even when we disagree with them.”
In her words, judges are “referees, not kings,” a sharp contrast to decades of judicial activism that used the courts as a substitute legislature.
