Senator Elizabeth Warren has lashed out at the Supreme Court after it officially overturned Roe v Wade last week, striking down abortion rights across the US.
In an interview with ABC News’s Martha Raddatz, the Massachusetts senator said the court had “burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had”.
“They just took the last of it and set a torch to it,” Ms Warren said.
“I believe we need to get some confidence back in our court and that means we need more justices on the United States Supreme Court. We’ve done it before, we need to do it again.”
On 24 June, six conservative justices, who now make up a majority on the nine-member court, ruled in favour of a Mississippi law that outlaws abortion at 15 weeks of pregnancy while also overturning key precedents established by the 1973 decision in Roe v Wade as well as an affirming decision in 1992’s Planned Parenthood v Casey.
When asked about why the decision to outlaw abortions should not be left to states, Ms Warren said: “We have never left individual rights to the states. The whole idea is that women are not second-class citizens and the government is not the one that will decide about the continuation of a pregnancy.”
“Access to abortion, like other medical procedures, should be available across the board to all people in this country.”
She also urged US president Joe Biden to use his available tools to “make abortion as available as possible, including medication abortion and using federal lands as a place where abortion can occur.”
Following the Supreme Court order, Mr Biden said in his remarks to the nation: “Let’s be very clear – the health and life of women in this country are now at risk.”
“The Supreme Court expressly took away a constitutional right for the American people. They didn’t limit it. They simply took it away.”
When asked if the process of confirming justices to the Supreme Court should change, Ms Warren said that Republicans have got people into the court who may not have been overtly against Roe v Wade but supported overturning it internally.
“But I do know this: that the Republicans have been very overt about trying to get people through the court who didn’t have a published record on Roe but who they knew, wink, wink, nod, nod, were going to be extremist on the issue of Roe v Wade and that is exactly what we have ended up with,” she said.
