Biden vows to make Roe v Wade 'law of the land' if GOP confirms Amy Coney Barrett as Supreme Court justice
Even as people across the nation are praying for the recovery of President Donald Trump, who recently tested positive for the coronavirus, the controversy over the appointment of Amy Coney Barrett as the latest judge to the Supreme Court bench has not died down.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who is challenging Trump in this year’s election, has vowed that he would enact legislation codifying Roe v. Wade if the in-power GOP confirmed Barrett on the apex court and the landmark law shielding abortion rights are struck down.
While the 48-year-old SC nominee’s views on the historic case of 1973 in which the court ruled that the US Constitution protects a pregnant woman’s choice to have an abortion without excessive government restriction, the anti-GOP camp is afraid that Barrett would target it once she comes on board.
Trump nullified fears Barrett would target ruling
Trump, who nominated Barrett on September 26 as a replacement for the iconic Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who passed away on September 18, assured during his debate with Biden last week that Roe v. Wade would not potentially face a threat from Barrett. He said that after Biden expressed concern that the new SC nominee could roll back the abortion rights at the federal level. Trump nullified his opponent’s view to say that one doesn’t yet know her view on the landmark judgment.
But given Barrett’s past actions on the judgment, one can still not be assured. It has been revealed recently that in 2006, Barrett, a devout Catholic, signed off on a newspaper advertisement that sought for overturning Roe v. Wade ruling and called the verdict “barbaric” and a “raw exercise of judicial power.” The two-page ad, which was published by the St Joseph County Right to Life group, an extreme anti-choice body in Indiana, is considered to be the most striking evidence that Barrett is personally opposed to the SC’s 1970s’ verdict.
Biden, who was speaking at an NBC town hall in Florida on Monday, October 5, took a question from a young woman from the audience who said that access to abortion and birth control is “imperative” and wanted to know the former vice president’s stand on protecting reproductive rights amid Barrett’s nomination who is expected to get a more-than favorable hearing at the Senate later this month.
'Pass legislation making Roe law of land'
“Number one, we don’t know exactly what she will do, although expectation is that she may very well move to overview – overrule – Roe,” Biden said, days after the revelation came over Barrett’s past reservation over the judgment. “And the only thing, the only responsible response to that would be to pass legislation making Roe the law of the land. That’s what I would do,” he added.
He didn’t follow up with the second point in his answer though and the host, Lester Holt, went to a commercial. The issue of abortion rights could see a major political battle shaping up in the Senate which the Democrats are eyeing to win this fall. Any legislative move enshrining those rights into law is expected to meet a GOP filibuster in the Senate, even if the red party loses control of the body, reports Daily Mail. Some Democrats, on the other hand, are pushing their own leadership to act to bring the filibuster to an end so that Biden can rush through his agenda without hitting a wall. Such an outcome could be witnessed if the Democrats get to control the Senate and Biden can push through a range of agenda including the abortion issue.
But Biden also faced a potential challenge from the fact that if the GOP confirms Barrett as an SC justice, the conservatives will gain a 6-3 majority in the court, even if he were to beat Trump to clinch the White House.