Antonin Scalia (1986): “I assure you, I have no agenda. I am not going onto the court with a list of things that I want to do. … There are doubtless laws on the books apart from abortion that I might not agree with, that I might think are misguided, perhaps some that I might even think in the largest sense are immoral in the results that they produce. In no way would I let that influence my determination of how they apply.”
Clarence Thomas (1991): “I believe the Constitution protects the right to privacy. And I have no reason or agenda to prejudge the issue or to predispose to rule one way or the other on the issue of abortion, which is a difficult issue. … Senator, your question to me was did I debate the contents of Roe v. Wade, the outcome in Roe v. Wade, do I have this day an opinion, a personal opinion on the outcome in Roe v. Wade; and my answer to you is that I do not.”
John G. Roberts Jr. (2005): “Well, beyond that, [Roe v. Wade is] settled as a precedent of the court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis. And those principles, applied in the Casey case, explain when cases should be revisited and when they should not. And it is settled as a precedent of the court, yes.”
Samuel A. Alito Jr. (2006): “That [a document in which he declared that the Constitution provides no right to abortion] was a statement that I made at a prior period of time when I was performing a different role, and as I said yesterday, when someone becomes a judge, you really have to put aside the things that you did as a lawyer at prior points in your legal career and think about legal issues the way a judge thinks about legal issues.”
Neil M. Gorsuch (2017): “I’m not in a position to tell you whether I’d personally like or dislike any precedent. That’s not relevant to my job … Precedent … deserves our respect. And to come in and think that just because I’m new or the latest thing I’d know better than everybody who comes before me would be an act of hubris.”
In contrast, when the liberal justices were asked the same question in their confirmation hearings, they were perfectly forthright, saying that yes, under the Constitution there is a right to abortion and they’d vote to uphold Roe.
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