WASHINGTON, D.C., USA — Justice Amy Coney Barrett would be one of the conservative votes on the United States Supreme Court if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Barrett has not been shy about her beliefs on abortion in the past.
Her one public vote on the Supreme Court concerning abortion was to allow the Texas "fetal heartbeat" law to take effect. She also cast two votes as an appeals court judge to reconsider rulings that blocked Indiana abortion restrictions.
In 2016, shortly before the election that would put Trump in office, she commented about how she thought abortion law might change if Trump had the chance to appoint justices. "I ... 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," said Barrett, then a Notre Dame law professor. She said limits on what she called "very late-term abortions" and restrictions on abortion clinics would be more likely to be upheld.
Barrett also has a long record of personal opposition to abortion rights, co-authoring a 1998 law review article that said abortion is "always immoral." At her 2017 hearing to be an appeals court judge, Barrett said in written testimony, "If I am confirmed, my views on this or any other question will have no bearing on the discharge of my duties as a judge."
Although Barrett allowed the Texas law to take effect, she joined Kavanaugh during oral arguments in raising skeptical questions about its structure, asking about provisions of the law that force providers to fight lawsuits one by one and, she said, don't allow their constitutional rights to be "fully aired."
Judge Barrett was confirmed as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in 2017. She graduated from the Notre Dame Law School and taught there from 2002 until her 2020 appointment to the high court. In 2018, Judge Barrett was honored as the law school's distinguished teacher of the year.
She and her family sold their Indiana home in April 2021 to a Notre Dame professor as they moved to Washington, D.C.