(Reuters) -Conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has defended her 2022 vote to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that recognized a constitutional right to abortion in a new book set to be published next week.
“(T)he Court’s role is to respect the choices that the people have agreed upon, not to tell them what they should agree to,” Barrett wrote in her memoir, “Listening to the Law,” according to CNN, which obtained a copy before its September 9 release.
The 5-4 ruling in 2022 set in motion a dramatic change in abortion access for millions of women in America, with 18 states implementing near-total abortion bans or bans at an early stage of pregnancy, according to the Guttmacher Institute, an abortion rights research group.
Overall, the share of Americans who support abortion rights has grown over the last decade. In a 2024 Reuters/Ipsos poll, some 57% of respondents said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, up from 46% in 2014.
Republican President Donald Trump appointed Barrett to the court in 2020 after the death of liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a strong supporter of abortion rights. Barrett’s addition gave the court its current 6-3 conservative majority.
In the book, Barrett, 53, writes the right to end a pregnancy was never deeply rooted in U.S. history as were other implicit constitutional rights.
“The evidence does not show that the American people have traditionally considered the right to obtain an abortion so fundamental to liberty that it ‘goes without saying’ in the Constitution,” she wrote, according to CNN.
The spotlight on Barrett is set to intensify with numerous planned public appearances this month, including one on Thursday in New York. She garnered a $2 million advance for the book, Politico reported in 2021.
COURT SHIFTS TO THE RIGHT
Since Barrett joined the nine-member court, it has rapidly shifted American law to the right, not only by limiting abortion but also by widening gun rights, expanding religious rights and rejecting race-conscious university admissions policies.
During that time, the court’s public approval ratings have slipped, falling below 40% for the first time since 2000 according to a Gallup poll update in August, though Democrats view the court much more negatively than Republicans.The court wrapped up its last term in June with a major ruling Barrett wrote curtailing the power of federal judges to block presidential policies nationwide, a win for Trump in a case in which he is seeking to restrict automatic citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil as part of his hardline approach to immigration.
The court has sided with Trump’s administration in almost every case it has been called upon to review on an emergency basis following lower court rulings impeding his policies.
In her book, Barrett addressed this emergency docket, also known as a shadow docket, which has exploded in both volume and importance in recent years compared to the court’s regular work, which typically involves oral arguments and extensive briefing and deliberation.
“As long as litigants continue filing emergency applications, the Court must continue deciding them,” Barrett wrote, according to CNN.
Barrett, who is married and has seven children, also touched on how some have perceived her devout Roman Catholic faith. During a confirmation hearing in 2017 for her prior judicial appointment to a federal appeals court based in Chicago, Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein told Barrett that “the dogma lives loudly within you.”
Without naming Feinstein, who died in 2023, Barrett wrote, “Some suggest that people of faith have a particularly difficult time following the law rather than their moral views. (I faced that criticism as a Catholic, most sharply when the Senate Judiciary Committee conducted a hearing to consider my nomination to the Seventh Circuit.) I’m not sure why.”
(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Howard Goller)
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