Senator: Anti-abortion stance a must for high court nominees to get vote

WASHINGTON — Sen. Josh Hawley, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Sunday that he would not support any nominee for the Supreme Court unless the nominee had publicly stated before his or her nomination that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established federal protection for abortion, was “wrongly decided.”

“I will vote only for those Supreme Court nominees who have explicitly acknowledged that Roe v. Wade is wrongly decided,” Hawley told The Washington Post. “By explicitly acknowledged, I mean on the record and before they were nominated.”

Hawley, R-Mo., added: “I don’t want private assurances from candidates. I don’t want to hear about their personal views, one way or another. I’m not looking for forecasts about how they may vote in the future or predictions. I don’t want any of that. I want to see on the record, as part of their record, that they have acknowledged in some forum that Roe v. Wade, as a legal matter, is wrongly decided.”

Hawley’s new marker comes as Republicans are preparing for the possibility that President Donald Trump could name a third member of the court later this year, should there be a vacancy.

And it comes as conservatives nationally are pushing to overhaul the court’s jurisprudence supporting the right of a woman to choose the procedure. But they have recently been disappointed by the court’s rulings on this front — and particularly by Chief Justice John Roberts.

Last month, the Supreme Court struck down a restrictive Louisiana abortion law. It was a dramatic victory for abortion rights activists and a bitter disappointment to conservatives in the first showdown on the issue since Trump’s remake of the court.

As with other recent liberal victories at the court, Roberts was key in the 5-to-4 decision. He joined the court’s liberals rather than his conservative colleagues, including Trump’s appointees, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Although no vacancy is imminent, White House officials and some top Republicans have privately discussed the possibility that Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative appointed by George H.W. Bush, could retire.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., blocked then-President Barack Obama from making an election-year appointment to the Supreme Court in 2016. He denied Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, a confirmation hearing, saying the next president should make the choice.

But McConnell has said he would push through a Trump nominee this year should an opening occur. The difference from 2016, he maintains, is that now the same political party controls the White House and the Senate.

Hawley, 40, a former law professor and clerk for Roberts, said he is focusing on abortion ahead of the next court nomination because he believes “Roe is central to judicial philosophy. Roe is and was an unbridled act of judicial imperialism. It marks the point the modern Supreme Court said, ‘You know, we don’t have to follow the Constitution. We won’t even pretend to try.’”

In 2019, Hawley and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., privately raised questions about Neomi Rao, Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and how she might rule on cases involving abortion. Rao later met with Hawley, who eventually voted in favor of her nomination.