Amy Coney Barrett, Last Seen Helping Effectively Outlaw Abortion in Texas, Says Judges Can’t Let “Personal Biases” Affect Rulings

Despite spending her entire Senate confirmation hearing claiming she couldn’t possibly express an opinion on literally anything, Amy Coney Barrett’s views on abortion are all too chillingly clear. As we learned last fall, as Mitch McConnell fast-tracked her appointment to the Supreme Court, the devout Catholic signed a letter calling for the end of the “barbaric” Roe v. Wade; wrote in a court opinion that abortion is “always immoral”; joined dissenters in Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc., arguing in favor of an Indiana law that would have required doctors to notify the parents of a minor seeking the medical procedure; and dissented in the case of Commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc., arguing in favor of a law that would have required that fetal remains be buried or cremated. Perhaps most disturbingly, she refused to answer a follow-up question from Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, who asked, “Under an originalist theory of interpretation, would there be any constitutional problem with a state making abortion a capital crime, thus subjecting women who get abortions to the death penalty?” Instead, she claimed it would not be “appropriate...to offer an opinion on abstract legal issues or hypotheticals,” meaning that yes, she sees a scenario in which the state could sentence a woman to death for getting an abortion.

Obviously, it was precisely these conservative viewpoints and others that got Republicans excited about giving Barrett a lifetime appointment on the highest court in the land, and why Mitch McConnell, who refused to hold a single hearing on Merrick Garland’s nomination because it was “an election year,” rammed Barrett through with less than two months until voters went to the polls in 2020. Which is why it’s more than a little galling to hear Barrett, whose seat on the court is thanks to partisan politics, and whose personal biases no doubt influenced her decision to allow a radical abortion law to go through in Texas earlier this month, claim that she and her fellow ideologues on the court are so far above politics they consider it a dirty word.

Speaking at an event celebrating a center named for Mitch McConnell, a.k.a. the 21st century’s foremost partisan hack, Barrett claimed that the court “is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” and that even though she rules in a manner that Republicans just love, “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties.” The Aunt Lydia of the Supreme Court added that justices must be “hyper-vigilant to make sure they’re not letting personal biases creep into their decisions,” which, again, is hilarious given that she has personally called for the end of the “barbaric” Roe v. Wade and just recently helped to effectively outlaw abortion at six weeks in Texas. And if your eyes are rolling into the back of your head re Barrett’s remarks, you’re not alone!

Barrett’s remarks met with widespread skepticism. The veteran TV newscaster Dan Rather said on Twitter: “We’re apparently playing the ‘Things you can’t make up’ game this morning. So Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett (speaking at a center named after Mitch McConnell, introduced by Senator McConnell) worries that the court is seen as ‘a bunch of partisan hacks.’” Scott Shapiro, a law professor at Yale, said Barrett had “expressed concerns Sunday that irony is dead.” Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, wrote: “Not ‘partisan hacks’? Then explain 80-0 partisan 5-4 record for big donors. And explain judicially conservative principles rolled over to get those wins for donors who put you on the Court.”

Meanwhile, reproductive rights advocates fear the Supreme Court is just months away from overturning Roe with Barrett’s help. Per The Washington Post:

Abortion providers told the Supreme Court on Monday that approving a Mississippi law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks would “scuttle a half-century of precedent and invite states to ban abortion entirely.” They said in their brief that Mississippi’s request that the court overturn its 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade was based on the state’s hope that a “changed composition” of the court would reject years of legal precedent. The court’s review of the Mississippi law, which prohibits almost all abortions after 15 weeks of gestation, has taken on even more significance since the Supreme Court earlier this month let a more restrictive Texas law go into effect. The court said it was not ruling on the constitutionality of that law, which authorizes private citizens to sue those who aid or abet an abortion after six weeks, only whether challengers had made a proper [argument] showing it should be stopped before taking effect. Still, the 5-to-4 decision indicated the increasingly conservative court is more open to altering decades of Supreme Court precedents.

When they do, watch out for Barrett to claim, probably as the guest of honor at Mitch McConnell’s birthday party, that the decisions had nothing whatsoever to do with politics or personal biases.