Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson brought up the so-called “right to an abortion” Tuesday during her Senate confirmation hearing, further adding to concerns about how she would rule on unborn babies’ right to life if confirmed.
Jackson mentioned abortion in response to questions about “due process” from U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a pro-life Republican from Texas, CNS News reports.
Cornyn asked Jackson if judges use the “due process” clause as means of advancing their own personal political agendas.
“Why isn’t substantive due process just another way for judges to hide their policy making under the guise of interpreting the Constitution?” he asked.
The U.S. Constitution never mentions the right to an abortion, but activist judges interpreted it to add the “right” to kill an unborn baby through Roe v. Wade in 1973. The ruling conflicts with language in the Fifth and 14th Amendments, which prohibit persons from being “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” as well as laws that recognized unborn babies as “persons” prior to Roe.
Instead of giving her opinion, Jackson explained what the court has done in the past, saying, “The justices have interpreted the due process clause of the 14th Amendment to include a substantive provision, the rights to due process.”
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She continued: “They have interpreted that to mean not just procedural rights relative to government action, but also the protection of certain personal rights related to intimacy and autonomy. They include things like the right to rear one’s children, I believe, the right to travel, the right to marriage, interracial marriage, the right to an abortion, contraception.”
Her statement neither confirmed nor denied her support for abortion on demand, but, as CNS News editor in chief Terrence P. Jeffrey pointed out, “If the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee believed there was any chance Jackson would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, they would not be supporting her confirmation.”
Roe v. Wade is widely criticized as bad case law, but abortion activists and their political allies cling to it anyway. Many believe Jackson would be no different than the justice who she has been nominated to replace, pro-abortion Justice Stephen Breyer. Jackson clerked for Breyer when he opposed the partial-birth abortion ban.
“Jackson clerked for and will now almost assuredly replace a justice who held that it is ‘irrational’ to protect the life of a partially born baby,” Jeffrey wrote.
The real “irrational” opinions actually come from abortion activists in their zeal to deny all rights and protections to unborn babies. Abortion is a made-up right. It not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution, but life is.
The Fifth Amendment says, “No person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” The 14th Amendment similarly states that “… nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”
American law and medicine recognized unborn babies as “persons” for more than 100 years prior to Roe, two law professors at the University of Notre Dame and Princeton University told the Supreme Court last year.
“Roe v. Wade conceded that if … ‘the fetus is a “person” within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment,’ the case for a constitutional right to abortion ‘collapses,’” they wrote, citing 19th century laws and court cases, statements from prominent medical groups and experts, and other evidence that confirms an unborn baby was considered “a person” from the moment of conception under the law and treated “’to all intents and purposes a child, as much as if born.’”
Yet, today, many “progressives” believe killing unborn babies – unique, irreplaceable living human beings – is a “fundamental right,” and Jackson would uphold that so-called “right” on the highest court in the land.
She has the backing of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which advocates for abortions without limits up to birth, and leftist “dark money” groups. President Joe Biden also promised that he would appoint justices to the Supreme Court who supports the so-called “right” to abort an unborn baby.
