Brett Kavanaugh Dances Around Views On Abortion

on September 5, 2018 in Washington, DC.
WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 05: Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh answers questions before the Senate Judiciary Committee during the second day of his Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill Sept... WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 05: Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh answers questions before the Senate Judiciary Committee during the second day of his Supreme Court confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill September 5, 2018 in Washington, DC. Kavanaugh was nominated by President Donald Trump to fill the vacancy on the court left by retiring Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh walked a careful line as Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) questioned him about his views on Supreme Court decisions establishing abortion rights.

As a judge, it is an important precedent of the Supreme Court,” he said, while discussing both Roe v. Wade, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed the constitutional right to an abortion.

Feinstein had asked him whether he viewed Roe as “settled law.”

He called it “settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court entitled to respect under stare decisis.”

Kavanaugh started going over the details of the Casey decision, until Feinstein attempted to return to his own views and how they might have changed since he worked in the George W. Bush administration.

“I understand how passionate and how deeply people feel about this issue,” Kavanaugh says on abortion rights. “I don’t live in a bubble.”

Notable Replies

  1. “I understand how passionate and how deeply people feel about this issue,” Kavanaugh says on abortion rights. “I don’t live in a bubble.”

    Have you declared bankruptcy due to the inability to pay for medical bills? Have you slept in a shelter for lack of housing? Have you been denied a mortgage or job or entry to the voting booth because of your skin color? Have you been refused an adoption because or your partner's gender?  Have you visited a food bank just to have your next meal?
    
    No? Well then you live in fucking bubble, like a lot of us do. Just admit it.
  2. Feinstein was a weak questioner. She let him go at the end, not pointedly asking him if the President of the US is subjected to the same laws as everyone else.

  3. He called it “settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court entitled to respect under stare decisis.”

    Plessy was a SCOTUS precedent, until it wasn’t.

  4. Avatar for paulw paulw says:

    I’m imagining a physicist being interviewed about special relativity and saying similar things. We’d think such a physicist was bonkers. Kavanaugh: objectively pro-dead-women.

  5. He called it “settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court entitled to respect under stare decisis.”

    Let me finish that for you, Judge Kavanaugh. Dredd Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson were also settled precedents ‘entitled to respect under stare decisis’. Given your beliefs and your previous writings on the subject, you would vote to overturn Roe as wrongly decided.

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