It wasn’t entirely clear exactly what Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) was trying to accomplish — given that Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court confirmation hinges on the support of two GOP senators who support abortion rights — but in his round of questioning Wednesday, Graham made an extended case for why some believe Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide, is bad law.
“Whether you agree with Roe v. Wade or not, the reason some legal scholars object to this concept is breathtakingly unlimited,” Graham said. “Whatever five people believe at any given time in history in terms of the word liberty, they can rewrite our history and come up with a new history. “
Graham’s opposition to abortion is by no means secret — and Judge Kavanaugh’s views aren’t really that hidden either, frankly.
Yet it was a somewhat surprising line of questioning from the Republican, given that other Republicans on the committee have offered Kavanaugh questions appeared designed to paint Dem criticisms of him as extreme.
Instead, Graham seemed to be asking Kavanaugh to do the very thing Judiciary Committee Democrats had: tell them what he really thinks about whether there’s a constitutional right to abortion. Kavanaugh, meanwhile, stuck to his rhetoric of reciting the Supreme Court’s precedent on the issue while declining to weigh in how he specifically would view such a case.
“I hope that one day the court will sit down and think long and hard about the path they’ve charted,” Graham said. “And not just about abortion. Whether or not it’s right for people in your business on any given day based on any given case of controversy, to say that the word liberty looking at the history of the country and the penumbra of rights means ‘X.'”
