Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett defended the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning the federal right to an abortion and pushed back on the idea that the high court has a role to play in making medical judgments.
In her first television interview since her confirmation five years ago, Barrett said Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — which overruled Roe v. Wade — made abortion a matter for the states to decide.
“Dobbs 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 told CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell.
O’Donnell asked the associate justice about a passage from the minority’s dissent that said the Supreme Court “may face questions about the application of abortion regulations to medical care,” including the morning-after pill, in vitro fertilization, IUDs and miscarriage treatment.
Barrett noted those decisions have not come before the Supreme Court and are now “left to the democratic process” in 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 said.
“You know, 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. 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,” she added.
