Justice Amy Coney Barrett responds to criticism that the Supreme Court is allowing Trump to expand his power
Amy Coney Barrett had been teaching full-time for nearly two decades, at Notre Dame's campus in South Bend, Indiana, until she was selected by President Donald Trump, in 2020, to serve on the Supreme Court. Now, she's traded the classroom for the courtroom, although she continues to teach a weeklong seminar on Constitutional Law.
In her first television interview since she filled the seat left by the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Barrett was asked whether she believed the Court has shifted to the right.
"I think shifting to the right, or shifting to the left, I think those are other people's labels, and that's other people's game," she said. "I don't think of it that way. You know, I just decide the cases as they come. I've been criticized by both the right and the left."
Justice Barrett's legal philosophy and personal story are the focus of her new book, "Listening to the Law," out on September 9. In it, she writes that, for her, the past five years have not been easy since joining the Supreme Court: "I'm happiest with my old friends who knew me before I became Justice Barrett, and I am wistful when we're back in South Bend."
But she does not regret joining the High Court. "No, I don't regret it," she said. "And I think it's really important work, and I'm proud to serve. And we do have a good life in Washington, and we have friends in Washington. But there is something nice about our old life."
Observers at the Supreme Court describe the 53-year-old mother of seven as "the most influential justice" on the court today. Among the most notable instances of that was her vote to overturn Roe v. Wade in the 2022 Dobbs decision, which overturned nearly 50 years of precedent surrounding the right to an abortion.
For the minority's dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan wrote:
"[T]he Court may face questions about the application of abortion regulations to medical care most people view as quite different from abortion. What about the morning-after pill? IUDs? In vitro fertilization? And how about the use of dilation and evacuation or medication for miscarriage management?"
Asked whether she sees those issues coming about now as a result of Dobbs, Barrett replied, "Those are issues inherent in medical practice. And sure, they surround pregnancy care and the care of women. And those are issues that are left now to the democratic process. And the states are working those out. We have not had those cases on our docket."
But, Barrett added, "Dobbs did not render abortion illegal. Dobbs did not say anything about whether abortion is immoral. Dobbs said that these are questions that are left to the states. And all of these kinds of questions – decisions that you mention that require medical judgments – are not ones that our Constitution connects to the courts, you know, to decide how far into pregnancy the right of abortion might extend. You know, the court was in the business of drawing a lot of those lines before, and what Dobbs says is that those calls are properly left to the democratic process. And the states have been working those out. There's been a lot of legislative activity and a lot of state constitutional activity since the decision in Dobbs was rendered."
Some groups that have been helping women pay for abortions and associated travel are cutting back their aid as travel costs rise.
Organizations that help pay abortion costs are capping how much they can help as travel costs rise and the wave of “rage giving” that fueled them two years ago has subsided.
Abortion funds, which have operated across the U.S. for decades, in many cases as volunteer groups, ramped up their capacity fast after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending a national right to abortion. Donations rolled in from supporters who saw the groups as key to maintaining abortion access as most Republican-controlled states implemented bans.
The expansion of the funds and increasing access to abortion pills are major reasons the number of abortions has risen slightly despite bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy in 14 states and after about six weeks of pregnancy, before many women know they are pregnant, in another four.
But the funds have found that even with record budgets, it’s not enough to fill all the gaps between the cost of obtaining abortions and what women seeking them can afford as they have to travel farther for legal procedures.
The National Abortion Federation, which helps people seeking abortions across the country, used to cover half the cost of the abortion for callers who couldn’t afford it. Since July, it’s pulled back to 30%. Brittany Fonteno, the organization’s president and CEO, said the allocations had to be cut because of the rising demand and costs — even though the fund has a record $55 million budget this year.
“We’re at the point now where we know that people who are most impacted by funding shifts — and by abortion bans which have caused the funding shifts — are the people who can least afford to be kept away from care,” Fonteno said. “And that includes people of color, younger people, immigrants and people with lower incomes.”
Other groups have also imposed limits on aid to keep from exhausting their funds.
Cherry Nelms wears a linen dress by Adams, Tebilized; by Kasper.
Bob Taft wears a navy suit in worsted tropical wool. Signed Lebow, it is British wool. Sandals by Evins, stockings barely reinforced and lightly dyed; Archer, hat by Dobbs.
Cherry Nelms porte une robe en lin Adams, Tebilized ; par Kasper.
Bob Taft porte un costume bleu marine, en laine peignée tropicale. Signé Lebow, est en laine britannique. Sandales par Evins, bas à peine renforcés et légèrement teintés; Archer, chapeau par Dobbs.
Conservativism is, in other words, the opposite of the rule of law, which is the idea that the law applies equally to all. Many of America’s most predictably weird moments live in the tension between the rule of law and the conservative’s demand to be protected — but not bound — by the law.
Think of the Republican women of Florida whose full-throated support for the perfomatively cruel and bigoted policies of Ron Desantis turned to howls of outrage when the governor signed a law “overhauling alimony” (for “overhauling,” read “eliminating”):
This is real leopards-eating-people’s-faces-party stuff, and it’s the only source of mirth in an otherwise grim situation.
But out of the culture-war bullshit backfires, none is so sweet and delicious as the religious liberty self-own. You see, under the rule of law, if some special consideration is owed to a group due to religious liberty, that means all religions. Of course, Wilhoit-drunk conservatives imagine that “religious liberty” is a synonym for Christian liberty, and that other groups will never demand the same carve outs.
Remember when Louisiana decided spend tax dollars to fund “religious” schools under a charter school program, only to discover — to their Islamaphobic horror — that this would allow Muslim schools to get public subsidies, too?
(They could have tried the Quebec gambit, where hijabs and yarmulkes are classed as “religious” and therefore banned for public servants and publicly owned premises, while crosses are treated as “cultural” and therefore exempted — that’s some primo Wilhoitism right there)
The Satanic Temple has perfected the art of hoisting religious liberty on its own petard. Are you a state lawmaker hoping to put a giant Ten Commandments on the statehouse lawn? Go ahead, have some religious liberty — just don’t be surprised when the Satanic Temple shows up to put a giant statue of Baphomet next to it:
And now we come to Dobbs, and the cowardly, illegitimate Supreme Court’s cowardly, illegitimate overturning of Roe v Wade, a move that was immediately followed by “red” states implementing total, or near-total bans on abortion:
These same states are hotbeds of “religious liberty” nonsense. In about a dozen of these states, Jews, Christians, and Satanists are filing “religious liberty” challenges to the abortion ban. In Indiana, the Hoosier Jews For Choice have joined with other religious groups in a class action, to argue that the “religious freedom” law that Mike Pence signed as governor protects their right to an abortion:
Their case builds on precedents from the covid lockdowns, like decisions that said that if secular exceptions to lockdown rules or vaccine mandates existed, then states had to also allow religious exemptions. That opens the door for religious exemptions to abortion bans — if there’s a secular rule that permits abortion in the instance of incest or rape, then faith-based exceptions must be permitted, too.
Some of the challenges to abortion rules seek to carve out religious exemptions, but others seek to overturn the abortion rules altogether, because the lawmakers who passed them explicitly justified them in the name of fusing Christian “values” with secular law, a First Amendment no-no.
As Rabbi James Bennett told Politico’s Alice Ollstein: “They’re entitled to their interpretation of when life begins, but they’re not entitled to have the exclusive one.”
In Florida, a group of Jewish, Buddhist, Episcopalian, Universalists and United Church clerics are challenging the “aiding and abetting” law because it restricts the things they can say from the pulpit — a classic religious liberty gambit.
Kentucky’s challenge comes from three Jewish women whose faith holds that life begins “with the first breath.” Lead plaintiff Lisa Sobel described how Kentucky’s law bars her from seeking IVF treatment, because she could face criminal charges for “discarding non-viable embryos” created during the process.
Then there’s the Satanic Temple, in court in Texas, Idaho and Indiana. The Satanists say that abortion is a religious ritual, and argue that the state can’t limit their access to it.
These challenges all rest on state religious liberty laws. What will happen when some or all of these reach the Supreme Court? It’s a risky gambit. This is the court that upheld Trump’s Muslim ban and the right of a Christian baker to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. It’s a court that loves Wilhoit’s “in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”
It’s a court that’s so Wilhoit-drunk, it’s willing to grant religious liberty to bigots who worry about imaginary same-sex couples:
But in the meantime, the bigots and religious maniacs who want to preserve “religious liberty” while banning abortion are walking a fine line. The Becket Fund, which funded the Hobby Lobby case (establishing that religious maniacs can deny health care to their employees if their imaginary friends object), has filed a brief in one case arguing that the religious convictions of people arguing for a right to abortion aren’t really sincere in their beliefs:
This is quite a line for Becket to have crossed — religious liberty trufans hate it when courts demand that people seeking religious exemptions prove that their beliefs are sincerely held.
Not only is Becket throwing its opposition to “sincerely held belief” tests under the bus, they’re doing so for nothing. Jewish religious texts clearly state that life begins at the first breath, and that the life of a pregnant person takes precedence over the life of the fetus in their uterus.
The kicker in Ollstein’s great article comes in the last paragraph, delivered by Columbia Law’s Elizabeth Reiner Platt, who runs the Law, Rights, and Religion Project:
The idea of reproductive rights as a religious liberty issue is absolutely not something that came from lawyers. It’s how faith communities themselves have been talking about their approach to reproductive rights for literally decades.
The Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop (I’m a grad, instructor and board member) is having its fundraiser auction to help defray tuition. I’ve donated a “Tuckerization” — the right to name a character in a future novel:
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
"Autoportrait, Chapeau de Sport Mado-Dobbs et Manteau Mirande, Paris" de Lee Miller (1930) à l'exposition “Lee Miller” au Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris (MAM), juin 2026.
