What Trump’s Supreme Court appointments said about Roe vs Wade at their hearings

Trump’s nominees all agreed that Roe v. Wade was settled precedent during their confirmations

In the wake of the bombshell revelation that the Supreme Court has drafted a decision that would overturn landmark abortion ruling Roe v. Wade, analysts have returned to the statements former president Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominees have made on the issue.

Politico reported late on Monday that it had received a leaked draft of a Supreme Court decision arguing for the overturn of Roe v. Wade.

Here is what Mr Trump's Supreme Court nominees have said in the past about their stance on the ruling.

Justice Neil Gorsuch

Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch said during his confirmation hearing that he would "have walked out the door" if Mr Trump had asked him to overturn Roe v. Wade.

According to CNN, Mr Gorsuch was asked by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham if Mr Trump had asked him to overturn the ruling.

“No … I would have walked out the door,” Mr Gorsuch said. “That’s not what judges do.”

He also defended precedent during his confirmation hearing.

“Part of the value of precedent – and it has lots of value, it has value in and of itself, because it is our history and our history has value intrinsically. But it also has an instrumental value in this sense: it adds to the determinacy of law," he said. "Once a case is settled, that adds to the determinacy of the law. What was once a hotly contested issue is no longer a hotly contested issue. We move forward.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett

NPR reports that Ms Barrett, Mr Trump's final Supreme Court nominee, said she did not consider Roe v. Wade a "super-precedent."

When she was asked why she did not consider it a super-precedent during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, she said that such precedents are "so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling. And I'm answering a lot of questions about Roe."

She said she believed that the presence of such questions "indicates that Roe doesn't fall in that category."

Ms Barrett admitted that scholars "across the spectrum say that doesn't mean that Roe should be overruled, but descriptively it does mean that it's not a case that everyone has accepted."

During her confirmation hearing, she was asked how a hypothetical Supreme Court staffed by a majority of conservative justices might impact access to abortions.

"I think don't think the core case – Roe's core holding that, you know, women have a right to an abortion – I don't think that would change. But I think the question of whether people can get very late-term abortions, how many restrictions can be put on clinics – I think that would change," she said at the time.

When Ms Barrett served as a law profressor at the University of Notre Dame Law School, she signed an ad that stated "it's time to put an end to the barbaric legacy of Roe v. Wade."

Justice Bret Kavanaugh

According to the Washington Post, Mr Kavanaugh previously said he would be open to overturning "settled law," which includes Roe v. Wade.

“If we think that the prior precedents are seriously wrong … why then doesn’t the history of this court’s practice with respect to those cases tell us that the right answer is to return to the position of neutrality?” Mr Kavanaugh asked Center for Reproductive Rights attorney Julie Rikelman, who represents the abortion provider suing Mississippi’s over a law that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy.

He said the Constitution was "silent and therefore neutral" on the topic of abortion.

Those comments seemed to contradict his comments during his 2018 confirmation hearing, during which he said that Roe v. Wade was "settled as precedent."

When asked by Senator Diane Feinstein what he meant by "settled law," he responded by saying the ruling was "settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court," and that it should be "entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis," which is the idea that precedents should not be overturned without significant reason.

“And one of the important things to keep in mind about Roe v. Wade is that it has been reaffirmed many times over the past 45 years, as you know, and most prominently, most importantly, reaffirmed in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992,” Mr Kavanaugh said at the time.