Amy Coney Barrett speaks at a White House event announced her nomination by Donald Trump for the Supreme Court
Credit: SHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, repeatedly declined to clarify whether she would vote to overturn the critical legal protection for abortion in America during her second day of confirmation hearings.
Ms Barrett, 48, rebuffed attempts by Democratic senators to get a statement on her position on Roe versus Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court ruling which legally protects a pregnant woman’s right to choose to have an abortion.
Throughout questioning before the Senate Judiciary Committee Ms Barrett took the position, adopted by previous nominees, that she would not reveal her personal views or comment on issues that could come before her on the bench if confirmed.
The stance, while in line with precedent, did little to satisfy Democratic critics who fear Ms Barrett’s conservative views and strong Catholic faith could make her sympathetic to arguments that the technicalities of the ruling mean it should be quashed.
During an early exchange in Tuesday’s hearing on Capitol Hill, Washington DC, the nominee was put on the spot by Dianne Feinstein, the most senior Democratic senator on the committee, about her stance on abortion.
Specifically she asked whether Ms Barrett agreed with the former Supreme Court justice she clerked for and describes as a mentor, the conservative judicial icon Antonin Scalia, that Roe versus Wade was wrongly decided.
“I do want to be forthright and answer every question so far as I can,” Ms Barrett responded, before quoting a former justice saying that during confirmation hearings a nominee for the Supreme Court should not give past rulings “a thumbs up or a thumbs down”.
“If I express a view on a precedent one way or another, whether I say I love it or I hate it, it signals to litigants that I might tilt one way or another in a pending case,” added Ms Barrett, who currently sits on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
Ms Feinstein expressed disappointment, saying “it’s distressing not to get a straight answer” on an issue that could affect half of America’s population, and asked again.
“Senator, I completely understand why you are asking the question. But again, I can’t pre-commit or say ‘yes I’m going in with some agenda’ because I’m not,” Ms Barrett responded.
“I don’t have any agenda,” she went on, adding: “I have an agenda to stick to the rule of law and decide cases as they come.”
The position was the same Ms Barrett adopted to questions on a whole range of specifics, from gun rights and sexual equality to questions over protecting the freedom of elections.
“If I give off the cuff answers then I would basically be a legal pundits and I don’t think we want judges to be legal pundits,” Ms Barrett, a lawyer and legal scholar turned judge, said at one point.
At another, during opening questioning from the Republican committee chairman Lindsey Graham, Ms Barrett, a mother of seven, made clear she would not be sharing her personal views.
“Judges cannot just wake up one day and say, ‘I have an agenda — I like guns, I hate guns, I like abortion, I hate abortion,’ and walk in like a royal queen and impose their will on the world,” she said.
More hearings will take place this week.
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