Amy Coney Barrett Keeps Insisting She Has “No Agenda” When It Comes to Abortion Law

In a back-and-forth during Senate confirmation hearings today, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) pressed Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trump’s nominee to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court, about her views on abortion. Barrett insisted that she’s entering the confirmation process with “no agenda” but to serve her country and the law.

With the passing of the liberal standard-bearer Justice Ginsburg, Barrett’s nomination has heightened fears that the right to an abortion could be jeopardized. There are special concern concerning the landmark decisions of Roe v. Wade in 1973, which first established the legal right to abortion, and Planned Parenthood v. Casey from 1992, which went one step further to say no law can place “undue burden” on that right. The precise meaning of “undue burden” continues to be argued about in the courts.

“I think in an area where precedent has been pressed and litigated, as is true of Casey, it would actually be wrong and a violation of the cannons for me to [grade precedent] as a sitting judge,” she said. “So if I express a view on a precedent one way or another, whether I say I love it or I hate it, it signals to litigants that I might tilt one way or another in a pending case.”

And yet, in many ways, her views on abortion law are already known.