You think Chief Justice John Roberts watched the presidential debate Tuesday night? If so, he could’ve taken issue in real time with Donald Trump giving “tremendous credit to those six justices” who overturned Roe v. Wade.
The factual problem with Trump’s statement is that it’s not true.
Five justices voted to ditch Roe. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett joined Justice Samuel Alito’s 2022 opinion in the Dobbs case that overturned federal abortion rights.
To be sure, Roberts didn’t dissent like the three Democratic appointees did. He wrote a separate concurring opinion saying, essentially, that overturning Roe went too far. Roberts wanted to further erode abortion rights but not eliminate them.
Indeed, the former president twice botched the number of justices in the Dobbs majority on Tuesday.
“And through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices we were able to do that,” he said at the debate against Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, referring to Dobbs. Trump later said: “And I give tremendous credit to those six justices.”
So, Trump gave Roberts “credit” where it wasn’t due.
The Dobbs vote count wasn’t Trump’s only lie during the debate. It wasn’t even the only abortion-related lie.
And unlike some of Trump’s other lies, the political benefit to him mischaracterizing the vote count in Dobbs is not readily apparent. In fact, he might even benefit from an accurate rendering. After all, his three high court appointees — Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett — accounted for a majority of those five justices. So if overturning Roe was a good thing, as Trump claims, then a vote for Trump in November is a vote for a president who will appoint more justices who will do more of the same on abortion.
Of course, the Dobbs vote count wasn’t Trump’s only lie during the debate. It wasn’t even the only abortion-related lie. One of the ABC moderators had to explain to the former president that “there is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.”
And in somehow trying to cast Dobbs as both uncontroversial and heroic, Trump falsely claimed that “every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote.”
Polling shows that the majority of reproductive age women in the U.S. oppose leaving the legality of abortion up to the states. And to note the obvious, a case reaches the Supreme Court because there’s disagreement over an issue. Dobbs was no exception. The 5-4 — not 6-3 — vote count on overturning Roe further underscores that reality.
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