John Roberts is the Supreme Court’s new swing vote. Is he going to overturn Roe v. Wade?
“And in 1990, as a lawyer with the Department of Justice, Roberts penned a brief that argued Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overturned.” That brief — which Roberts helped write as deputy solicitor general in 1990, according to the National Women’s Law Center (NWLC) — is Exhibit A for abortion rights supporters who fear that Roberts would overturn Roe. The brief argued that Roe v. Wade “was wrongly decided and should be overruled” and that a right to an abortion “find[s] no support in the text, structure or history of the Constitution.” While one cannot automatically assume that a political appointee agrees with a brief they are asked to write, the NWLC said there was circumstantial evidence that suggests the anti-Roe position was consistent with Roberts’s own.