Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett defended its decision in 2022 overturning the federal right to an abortion in an interview with CBS News over the weekend and insisted the high court doesn't have a role to play in medical judgments.
Barrett reiterated in her first TV interview since her confirmation five years ago that Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization — which overruled Roe v. Wade — "did not render abortion illegal. Dobbs did not say anything about whether abortion is immoral. Dobbs said that these are questions that are left to the states."
Barrett emphasized that "all of these kinds of questions — decisions that … require medical judgments — are not ones that our Constitution connects to the courts, to decide how far into pregnancy the right of abortion might extend."
The justice explained that "the court was in the business of drawing a lot of those lines before, and what Dobbs says is that those calls are properly left to the democratic process."
Barrett pointed out that "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."
Brian Freeman ✉
Brian Freeman, a Newsmax writer based in Israel, has more than three decades writing and editing about culture and politics for newspapers, online and television.