What Trump and Amy Coney Barrett Hide about Amy Coney Barrett

Eric Zuesse

U.S. President Donald Trump and his appointee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Amy Coney Barrett, hide the fact that Judge Barrett believes that both abortion and any form of after-conception contraception, such as a “morning-after pill”, constitute murder, because life, as will here be documented that she views it, begins at the very moment of conception, and not after the 20th week as soon as consciousness begins in a fetus, which is the existing, Roe-v.-Wade, standard.

A CBS News poll, taken May 29 to June 2 this year, of 1,309 American adults, found that only 24% of Americans agree with her view and say that abortion should simply be “not permitted.” 43% say it should be “generally available,” and 31% say it should be “available under stricter limits.” A subsequent, September 21 to September 29 NBC News poll asked respondents “Should Roe v. Wade be overturned?” and 66% said No; 29% said Yes. By more than two-to-one, Americans were opposed to overturning the existing law.

The only poll about the morning-after pill in which any sort of blanket legal restriction against its use was even listed as being an option was a 2013 NPR poll that offered, as an option, “A prescription should be required for all women regardless of age.” Only 16.7% of the 3,008 randomly sampled Americans chose that option, and all others chose options in which no prescription, at all, would be required above various age-limits, ranging upwards from 21 down to 15 years of age. Consequently, the percentage of Americans who might have felt that terminating a fertilized human egg within 5 days of its conception (as the morning-after pill is designed to do) should be treated as murdering a person, was something less than that 16.7%. For example, it might have been 8%. But, in any event, far fewer than 16.7% of Americans agree with Amy Coney Barrett, that use of the morning-after pill constitutes murder (because it intentionally terminates a “human life”). Far fewer than 16.7% of Americans think that a woman who uses a morning-after pill deserves to be sent to prison as a murderer. But Amy Coney Barrett is one of them. (Unless she thinks that some murderers shouldn’t go to prison. But how could she then justify that belief?)

Furthermore, only 24% of Americans agree with her view of abortion (that it is murder).

Here is what Amy Coney Barrett believes about both abortion and the morning-after pill:

“We, the following citizens of Michiana [Michigan and Indiana], oppose abortion on demand and defend the right to life from fertilization to natural death.”

That statement, in which she made clear that, to her, an intentional termination of a human “life” at any time, from the moment of fertilization (conception) on, constitutes murder, was signed in 2006, both by Amy Coney Barrett and her husband Jesse. That statement was attached to another, which was being published in the South Bend Tribune, which headlined “Roe v. Wade ‘an exercise of raw judicial power’ (Supreme Court Justice Byron White)”. This statement, likewise, made clear her belief, that Roe v. Wade needs to be overturned, and that abortions need to be outlawed in the United States, or else left to each individual state to outlaw or not — just like in the old back-alley, abortion-by-coat-hanger, days.

Back in 2006, Ms. Barrett was a professor of law at the Roman Catholic Notre Dame University. As the Wall Street Journal noted on October 1st, “During a segment about Judge Barrett in Tuesday’s presidential debate, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate, said Roe v. Wade was effectively an issue on the ballot because of the Supreme Court. Mr. Trump responded: ‘You don’t know her view on Roe v Wade.’” But, now, everyone knows, because she has publicly stated it, as clearly as possible, though both she and President Trump have been hiding it, till now.

As Britain’s Guardian reported on October 1st, the organization that sponsored the ad that Barrett and her husband had signed onto, Saint Joseph County Right to Life, when interviewed by the Guardian, said, “We support the criminalization of the doctors who perform abortions. At this point we are not supportive of criminalizing the women. We would be supportive of criminalizing the discarding of frozen embryos or selective reduction through the IVF [in-vitro fertilization] process.” However, if a woman takes an “emergency contraception” or “morning after” pill, and murder is intentionally killing a human “life,” and the pill kills a fertilized egg, then how can they say that “At this point we are not supportive of criminalizing the women”? Is that merely a political statement in order to deceive the public into believing that these people aren’t as extreme as they actually are? But how not-extreme would it even be to criminalize the medical doctors who perform abortions, and the ones who provide IVF services? How insane would that actually be? How could a rational person think that America’s Founders would have wanted their Constitution to be ‘interpreted’ in such a brutal and anti-scientific manner? How could it not be extremist, in the worst sense? After all, medical doctors have been shot, murdered, in America, for performing abortions. Is this something that America’s Founders would have wanted? When their Constitution, OUR Constitution, opened with a supreme commitment to “We, the People” and to “promote the general welfare,” were they referring to fertilized human eggs etc. until death, or instead only to conscious human beings, which don’t even exist prior to around 20 weeks? And, if to fertilized human eggs, then why not also to any mere vegetable, not even animals at all — biological entities that lack any nervous system, even at their maturity? Even mere bacteria and viruses are forms of “life.” But did any of the Founders so much as imagine such insanity as this which some U.S. Supreme Court ‘Justices’ believe and are religiously committed to? For such judges to believe it for themselves, as part of their personal religion, is one thing, they’ve a right to that, but for them to impose it as if this belief had any foundation in the U.S. Constitution is simply bizarre, insane, if not outright stupid. What is the logic of Amy Coney Barrett’s approach to these matters? Or: is there any? We now know what her views are. She has stated them. There is no logic to them. Certainly it’s not based in what is written in our Constitution. It is nowhere there, not at all. Not a bit. It is alien to the U.S. Constitution.

Neither Trump nor Barrett can hide it any longer, because it was already published, back in 2006. So, now, everybody knows it.

Here is what her hero, Antonin Scalia, said about the matter, at his confirmation hearings back in 1986:

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Our ranking Member, Senator Biden, is currently on the floor with the introduction of legislation dealing with drug regulation, and he will be over here very shortly. But I will proceed, if I might. Judge Scalia, if you were confirmed, do you expect to overrule the Roe v. Wade?

Judge SCALIA. Excuse me?

Senator KENNEDY. DO you expect to overrule the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision if you are confirmed?

Judge SCALIA. Senator, I do not think it would be proper for me to answer that question.

The CHAIRMAN [Senator Strom Thurmond, Republican, South Carolina]. I agree with you. I do not think it is proper to ask any question that he has to act on or may have to act on.

Judge SCALIA. I mean, if I can say why. Let us assume that I have people arguing before me to do it or not to do it. I think it is quite a thing to be arguing to somebody who you know has made a representation in the course of his confirmation hearings, and that is, by way of condition to his being confirmed, that he will do this or do that. I think I would be in a very bad position to adjudicate the case without being accused of having a less than impartial view of the matter.

Senator KENNEDY. There have been at least some reports that that was one of the considerations in your nomination. There are a lot of other, clearly, strengths which you bring to your own qualifications. But I am interested in what precedence you put on that decision being on the lawbooks. I am interested in your own concept in stare decisis. Do you believe in it? What is it going to take to overrule an existing Supreme Court decision?

Judge SCALIA. AS you know, Senator, they are sometimes overruled.

Senator KENNEDY. I am interested in your view.

Judge SCALIA. My view is that they are sometimes overruled. And I think that — 

Senator KENNEDY. But what weight do you give them?

Judge SCALIA [continuing]. I will not say that I will never overrule prior Supreme Court precedent.

Senator KENNEDY. Well, what weight do you give the precedents of the Supreme Court? Are they given any weight? Are they given some weight? Are they given a lot of weight? Or does it depend on your view

Judge SCALIA. It does not depend on my view. It depends on the nature of the precedent, the nature of the issue. … I assure you, I have no agenda. I am not going onto the Court with a list of things that I want to do. My only agenda is to be a good judge.

Wikipedia’s article on Scalia states: “Scalia repeatedly called upon his colleagues to strike down Roe v. Wade. Scalia hoped to find five votes to strike down Roe in the 1989 case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services but was not successful in doing so.” So: at his confirmation hearing, he had been lying. Is that not treachery? Or is it instead merely perjury?

A precedent therefore exists to Amy Coney Barrett, and Scalia is it. He was confirmed in a vote of the U.S. Senate, a vote of 98 to 0 — it was unanimous, every Senator, including, of course, Joe Biden (who now campaigns against Amy Coney Barrett), approving of Antonin Scalia, to interpret the U.S. Constitution.

America is anything but a democracy. There is plenty of precedent for that. Dictatorships are a dime a dozen, especially prior to the U.S. Revolution (which has long-since been overturned, by a quiet and gradual counter-revolution by America’s super-rich). In no sense does the majority rule in today’s America. National politics in this country is just for show: a “good-cop, bad-cop,” show. That’s all it now is. And that’s just as obvious as is the fact that Amy Coney Barrett intends to terminate the Roe v. Wade decision.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.