Meet the 9 Supreme Court Judges Who Voted to Overturn Roe V. Wade Abortion Case

9 Supreme Court Judges Who Ruled on Roe V. Wade Abortion Case

The right to an abortion, protected by the Constitution for almost fifty years, was declared to be unconstitutional when the U.S. Supreme Court formally overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022. Justice Samuel Alito stated that the 1973 Roe decision and several other high court rulings upholding Roe "must be overruled" because the reasoning behind it was "exceptionally weak," "egregiously wrong," and so "damaging" that it amounted to "an abuse of judicial authority." The nine Supreme Court justices said that the decision means "young women today will come of age with fewer rights than their mothers and grandmothers." They added that "from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term even at the steepest personal and familial costs." "With sorrow — for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent," they wrote as reported by NPR.

1. Justice Samuel Alito: Appointed By Republican George W Bush in 2006

"Abortion presents a profound moral issue on which Americans hold sharply conflicting views," Justice Samuel Alito stated in his opening remarks. Justice Alito was the one who drafted the historic ruling. He argued that the 1992 rulings in Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which upheld the right to an abortion, were incorrect from the moment they were rendered and needed to be overturned. "We therefore hold that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey must be overruled, and the authority to regulate abortion must be returned to the people and their elected representatives." As per Reuters, Alito later admitted the 'impact' of the ruling, "It's important to keep in mind that these decisions are not abstract discussions - they have a real impact on the world," he said at the Catholic University of America in Washington.

2. Justice Clarence Thomas: Appointed By Republican George HW Bush in 1991

Justice Clarence Thomas was the one who cast the first vote to overturn Roe thirty years ago, and some consider him to be the most conservative justice on the court. He specifically urged his colleagues to discuss the Supreme Court's judgments involving same-sex marriage, homosexual sex, and even contraception in his separate opinion piece. As per The Texas Tribune, in a statement that further fueled women's and LGBTQ groups' already elevated concerns that the Roe decision might not be the last one, Thomas stated that "in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents." "We should 'correct the error' established in those precedents,' as any substantive due process decision is 'demonstrably erroneous,'" Thomas said.

3. Justice Brett Kavanaugh: Appointed By Republican Donald Trump in 2018

In his decision, Justice Brett Kavanaugh stated that the US Constitution "neither outlaws nor legalizes abortion," despite being the subject of an FBI investigation into claims of sexual assault. He maintained that the ruling "leaves the question of abortion for the people and their elected representatives in the democratic process" and does not criminalize abortion. "It is settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court, entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis," he said. "The Supreme Court has recognized the right to abortion since the 1973 Roe v. Wade case. It has reaffirmed it many times." "Judges do not make decisions to reach a preferred result. Judges make decisions because the law and the Constitution as we see them compel the results," he said in his opening remarks as reported by NPR. 

4. Justice Neil Gorsuch: Appointed By Republican Donald Trump in 2017

Justice Neil Gorsuch was the first Supreme Court nominee nominated by then-President Donald Trump. Trump committed his campaign to choose "pro-life justices on the court" with the specific intention of overturning Roe. As per NPR, he stated, "I would tell you that Roe v. Wade, decided in 1973, is a precedent of the United States Supreme Court. It has been reaffirmed," he said. "A good judge will consider it as a precedent of the U.S. Supreme Court worthy as treatment of precedent like any other," Gorsuch noted that the Supreme Court had ruled that, for the due process provision of the 14th Amendment, which forms the basis of Roe v. Wade, a fetus is not a person.

5. Justice Amy Coney Barrett: Appointed By Republican Donald Trump in 2020

Users circulated a quote purportedly said by Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the second day of her confirmation hearing after the Supreme Court reversed the historic 1973 decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion for women nationwide. The quote read, "Cases are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling." As per Reuters, She clarified, “Okay, well people use super-precedent differently. The way that it's used in the scholarship and the way that I was using it in the article that you're reading from was to define cases that are so well settled that no political actors and no people seriously push for their overruling. And I'm answering a lot of questions about Roe, which I think indicates that Roe doesn't fall in that category. And scholars across the spectrum say that doesn't mean that Roe should be overruled but descriptively it does mean that it's a case - not a case that everyone has accepted and doesn't call for its overruling,” Barrett responded.

6. Chief Justice John Roberts: Appointed By Republican George W Bush in 2005

John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, expressed his "concurring in judgement" but gave disapproval of the ruling, arguing that it was overly expansive. In his opinion piece, he stated that he would not have gone so far as to abolish the right to an abortion, stating that he would have upheld the Mississippi statute that is at the center of the case—which forbids abortions beyond 15 weeks—and nothing further. He states that as a result, he decided to "concur only in the judgment". Defending his action he stated, “If the court doesn’t retain its legitimate function of interpreting the constitution, I’m not sure who would take up that mantle," Roberts said, per the Associated Press. "You don’t want the political branches telling you what the law is, and you don’t want public opinion to be the guide about what the appropriate decision is,” the chief justice said. 

7. Justice Stephen Breyer: Appointed By Democrat Bill Clinton (Breyer) in 1994

"With sorrow - for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection -we dissent," Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the concluding letter. As per Sky News, the liberal judge said that the court "betrays its guiding principles" by reversing Roe and Casey. He contended that the verdict has the following effect: "A state can thus transform what, when freely undertaken, is a wonder into what, when forced, maybe a nightmare." As per CBS News, in his book, Reading the Constitution, raised concerns about the conservatives on the court's preferred strategy, arguing that it has negative consequences when the court reverses established precedents—as it did in Roe v. Wade—and returns the decision over abortion to the states. "You overrule too many cases, and the law will turn into chaos. And before you know it, you won't know what the law is," Breyer said. "What is the principle? Is the principle that you think those cases decided then were really wrong, egregiously wrong, totally wrong? And how are you going to decide that?"

8. Justice Sonia Sotomayor: Appointed By Democrat Barack Obama in 2009

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the liberal judge, expressed to legal educators her "sense of despair" about the course the court had gone in its last term when its conservative majority had struck down the constitutional right to an abortion. As per Reuters, after her term ended in June, Sotomayor expressed her feelings of shock and sadness, describing herself as "shell-shocked" and "deeply sad." She has dissented in significant decisions, such as the abortion decision, as the court's 6-3 conservative majority has grown more forceful. "I did feel hopeless about the path my court was taking," Sotomayor admitted while speaking via video stream to an assembly of hundreds of legal scholars during the annual conference of the Association of American Law Schools in San Diego. 

9. Justice Elena Kagan: Appointed By Democrat Barack Obama in 2010.

As per The USA Today, Justice Elena Kagan made a series of public appearances to explain how she believed the court should function after the landmark ruling. "The court shouldn't be wandering around just inserting itself into every hot button issue in America, and it especially, you know, shouldn't be doing that in a way that reflects one ideology or one...set of political views over another," she said during a question-and-answer session at Salve Regina University in Rhode Island." A court does best when it keeps to the legal issues when it doesn't allow personal political views, personal policy views to an effect or infect its judging," said Kagan, who was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2010. "And the worst moments for the court have been times when judges have allowed that to happen."