Donald Trump said Friday that he doesn’t plan to ask potential Supreme Court justices whether they would favor overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion.
‘That’s a big one, and probably not. They’re all saying, “Don’t do that,” “You don’t do that,” “You shouldn’t do that”,’ he told the Fox Business Network in an interview airing Sunday.
‘I don’t think I’m going to be so specific,’ Trump told host Maria Bartiromo.
Trump’s 2017 nominee, Neil Gorsuch, has been reliably conservative. He sided with a 5-4 majority this week in a ruling that crisis pregnancy centers can’t be forced to promote state-sponsored abortion services to their clients.
‘I’m very proud of Neil Gorsuch. He has been outstanding,’ the president said.
In an interview to be broadcast Sunday, President Donald Trump downplayed the importance of overturning the abortion rights decision Roe v. Wade, saying he won’t ask potential Supreme Court nominees about the case
The pro-life movement has been galvanized for 45 years around the goal of seeing the ‘Roe’ case overturned
Anthony Kennedy (front row, 2nd left) will retire at the end of July, giving Trump a chance to nominate his second justice in two years; His first nominee, Neil Gorsuch (back row, right) sided with pro-lifers this week in a case about whether crisis pregnancy centers can be forced to promote state-funded abortion services
Trump has previously vowed to nominate ‘pro-life’ justices. He is expected to personally interview a handful of finalists chosen from a list of 25 candidates.
‘I’m putting conservative people on,’ he insisted, without spelling out any litmus tests he might apply.
The president, who once told an interviewer that he was proudly pro-choice, landed in election-year hot water for saying women should face ‘some form of punishment’ for breaking a future federal law banning abortion.
Both sides of the abortion debate had strong reactions this week when Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his plan to retire at the end of July.
‘Justice Kennedy’s retirement from the Supreme Court marks a pivotal moment for the fight to ensure every unborn child is welcomed and protected under the law,’ said Susan B. Anthony List president Marjorie Dannenfelser.
The pro-choice movement is powerful and moneyed, led by feminist advocacy groups and the clinic chain Planned Parenthood; they will make copious noise about any Trump nominee with a track record suggestive of a pro-life bent
Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, was a swing-vote on the court who often sided with the pro-choice movement.
That has abortion advocates worried.
‘Because President Trump will nominate the next Supreme Court Justice, a woman’s constitutional right to access legal abortion is in dire, immediate danger – along with the fundamental rights of all Americans,’ said Ilyse Hogue, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has already challenged Trump not to nominate a justice who is determined to repeal Roe.
‘The Senate should reject on a bipartisan basis any justice who would overturn Roe v. Wade [or] undermine key healthcare protections,’ he said in a speech on the Senate floor.
The fate of any Trump nominee, however, may rest in the hands of two pro-choice female Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska.
With the GOP’s slim 51-49 majority and Sen. John McCain unlikely to return from medical treatement for a malignant brain cancer, either of them could doom Trump’s pick on her own.
The pro-life movement in America has grown to formidable proportions, led by advocacy groups, evangelical voters and the Roman Catholic Church
Trump’s rise to power has spurred a wave of abortion laws, with 19 states adopting 63 new restrictions in 2017. That’s the highest single-year total since 2013, according to the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute.
Roe v. Wade was a sexual-revolution flashpoint that galvanized the women’s rights movement emerging out of the 1960s.
Its repeal has been the subject of loud and unrelenting pressure from evangelical groups and the Roman Catholic Church.
‘Roe v. Wade is doomed,’ CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin fretted on Wednesday. ‘It is gone because Donald Trump won the election and because he’s going to have the chance to appoint two Supreme Court justices.’
Norma McCorvey, the woman anonymized as ‘Jane Roe’ in the case, died a few weeks into the Trump presidency. A quarter-century after the decision, she wrote about her transformation into a pro-life activist.
The issue, she concluded, ‘was about children being killed in their mother’s wombs. All those years I was wrong.’