Supreme Court docket Justice Amy Coney Barrett defended the Supreme Court docket’s 2022 resolution overturning the federal proper to an abortion and pushed again on the concept the excessive courtroom has a task to play in making medical judgments.
In her first tv interview since her affirmation 5 years in the past, Barrett mentioned Dobbs v. Jackson Girls’s Well being Group — which overruled Roe v. Wade — made abortion a matter for the states to determine.
“Dobbs didn’t render abortion unlawful. Dobbs didn’t say something about whether or not abortion is immoral. Dobbs mentioned that these are questions which are left to the states,” Barrett advised CBS Information’s Norah O’Donnell.
O’Donnell requested the affiliate justice a couple of passage from the minority’s dissent that mentioned the Supreme Court docket “may face questions about the application of abortion regulations to medical care,” together with the morning-after tablet, in vitro fertilization, IUDs and miscarriage therapy.
Barrett famous these choices haven’t come earlier than the Supreme Court docket and at the moment are “left to the democratic process” within the states.
“All of these kinds of questions — decisions that you mention that require medical judgments — are not ones that the Constitution commits to the court to decide how far into pregnancy the right of abortion might extend,” Barrett mentioned.
“You realize, the courtroom was within the enterprise of drawing loads of these traces earlier than, and what Dobbs says is that these calls are correctly left to the democratic course of. And the states have been working these out. There’s been loads of legislative exercise and loads of state constitutional exercise because the resolution in Dobbs was rendered,” she added.
