Juan Williams: Abortion rights will trigger midterm heat

Face it — from Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the big issue in modern Supreme Court confirmation hearings has been abortion. 

When Jackson joins the court this summer, her most telling impact will be punching back against recent rulings by conservatives weakening abortion rights. 

Thomas and Barrett are now the key players in the conservative majority expected to roll back — if not strike down — nearly 50 years of constitutional protection of abortion. 

That decision is expected before Jackson is seated when the court rules on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a Mississippi case orchestrated by anti-abortion groups to allow the high court to upend Roe v. Wade.  

For decades, Senate Republicans have hidden their nominees’ opposition to the court’s 1973 ruling in favor of abortion rights because overturning it is way out of step with public opinion. 

To hear conservatives tell it, Jackson’s rough treatment by Republicans was payback for Senate Democrats’ treatment of Robert Bork in 1987 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.  

The opposition to Bork was led by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). He famously declared that “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions.” 

In 2018, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), a supporter of abortion rights, said Kavanaugh won her vote by pledging that “precedent on precedent” meant that, after nearly 50 years, the law protecting abortion was settled. 

But Kavanaugh voted in 2021 to allow a Texas law to go into effect banning abortion after six weeks, with no exception for rape or incest. 

When Barrett was nominated in 2020, Republicans dismissed concern about Republicans packing the court with justices intent on ending legal abortion. 

But then it was revealed Barrett had signed a 2006 newspaper advertisement from a group that declared abortion to be “barbaric.” 

When I covered Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings, I saw firsthand how the opposition to Thomas was largely driven by supporters of abortion rights.  

It turns out the alarm was justified. 

In 2019, Thomas called Roe a “notoriously incorrect” decision.   

A Fox News poll published in January found 63 percent of voters believe that the Supreme Court should let the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade stand. Only 31 percent of voters say it should be overturned.  

Undoing Roe is also out of step with corporate America. Major companies are currently pushing back against the onslaught on abortion rights in Republican-majority state legislatures. 

In the last few weeks, corporate heavy hitters including Apple, Citigroup and Yelp have announced they will cover travel costs for employees who must travel out of state to obtain abortions. 

A ruling drastically weakening, if not overturning, abortion rights is sure to be a polarizing issue stirring up this year’s midterm elections. Expect plenty of Democratic ads to feature Barrett, Kavanaugh and Thomas as a reminder of the ongoing threat to those rights.

Many of the most vehement political opponents of abortion have no real connection to the lives of the women who are grappling with whether to terminate their pregnancies. 

Most women who have abortions are poor and non-white, according to the Guttmacher Institute. 

According to Guttmacher’s data, 49 percent live below the poverty line and another 26 percent are close to poverty. Fewer than half are married or living with a partner. Most — 59 percent — already have at least one child and are trying to raise them on the little money they have.  

Those statistics admittedly date back to 2014. But there is no reason to think the demographic patterns have changed significantly since then. 

At that time, most U.S. abortion patients — 59 percent — were women of color. Twenty-eight percent of the women were Black, 25 percent Hispanic, and 6 percent Asian/Pacific Islander. Thirty-nine percent were white.  

Among the women currently on the court, two of three support abortion rights. When Jackson joins the court, it will be three of four. 

Barrett will be the only female justice likely to vote against upholding Roe v. Wade.

Last week, Florida, Oklahoma and Kentucky advanced laws restricting abortions. The Kentucky law is written along the lines of the Mississippi abortion law now before the court that could result in overturning Roe.  

Conservatives lost the confirmation battles over Bork and Jackson. But in the current battle over constitutional protections for abortion rights they are likely to score a win given the court’s 6-3 right-wing majority. 

The next battle will feature liberals trying to claw back abortion rights. 

Soon-to-be Justice Jackson will be a leader of that movement.  

Juan Williams is an author, and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.