Epoch Times - The powerful inside story of how Justice Samuel Alito has reshaped the Supreme Court
Aired: 2026-05-09
Duration: 03:36


=== Why Roe v Wade Is Charged (03:36) ===

[00:00:00]  For those that are the uninitiated, okay, why is this particular issue so charged?
[00:00:11]  It's another story I get into in the book, is sort of the history of how abortion has been handled by the court.
[00:00:18]  In some ways, the issue is really charged.
[00:00:20]  I mean, first of all, it's dealing with life and death, it's dealing with what you think about whether children in the womb with their lives should be protected, whether abortion is good for the mothers or bad.
[00:00:30]  These are really important.
[00:00:31]  Important issues that get at the heart of what do you think it means to be human?
[00:00:35]  What does it mean to have human dignity?
[00:00:37]  What are the responsibilities of government?
[00:00:39]  But what the court did in 1973 is write what many people consider to be one of the top two to five worst decisions the court ever issued.
[00:00:49]  And they said, We are going to claim that there is a hidden right to abortion that the founders put in the Constitution.
[00:00:58]  It's patently and obviously not true.
[00:01:01]  But they said it and they just asserted it.
[00:01:03]  Took away from the people the right to debate what abortion policy should be.
[00:01:09]  And for 50 years, people complained.
[00:01:12]  We would like to debate this issue, or we would like to protect children at this stage of gestation, or we would like to ban this particularly barbaric practice of how to end an unborn child's life.
[00:01:25]  But they weren't allowed to because the Supreme Court said that they had somehow located a secret place where the abortion was in the Constitution.
[00:01:34]  And then everyone knew it wasn't true.
[00:01:37]  Liberals knew it, conservatives.
[00:01:39]  Knew it.
[00:01:40]  But I don't think that a lot of the public that would be opposed to ending Roe v. Wade knew it.
[00:01:47]  Does that make sense?
[00:01:48]  I don't know.
[00:01:49]  I mean, I think the issue was that, I want to say that even liberals acknowledged at the time, they would say, I actually do support abortion.
[00:01:57]  I don't think this decision does an even halfway good job of pretending to be law.
[00:02:04]  And so Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who's a lioness on the court, she herself criticized the Roe v. Wade decision.
[00:02:10]  On those same grounds, she thought it should be that the people were deciding their policy and that this took it away from the people.
[00:02:18]  But people really like abortion.
[00:02:21]  Some people like abortion.
[00:02:22]  Some people like that this enables a certain treatment of sex that more aligns with their values.
[00:02:28]  And so they would fight it at all costs, even though if they were being honest, they would say it's not the best law here.
[00:02:35]  And so every Supreme Court confirmation became a battle over that issue.
[00:02:40]  And any time the court came close to overturning Roe v. Wade, There would be this massive public pressure campaign that the justices would crater under.
[00:02:50]  So in 1992, there was a really good case called Casey v. Planned Parenthood.
[00:02:55]  Everyone expected this would finally overturn Roe v. Wade.
[00:02:58]  Three Republican appointed justices, Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, they form a troika, they called themselves, to save Roe v. Wade.
[00:03:09]  They said, okay, we all know it wasn't hidden where the court said it was hidden.
[00:03:14]  But we found this other place.
[00:03:15]  That it's hidden, and it's a better place for it to be hidden.
[00:03:18]  And now you all have to stop fighting about it.
[00:03:21]  Well, if you paid attention to abortion politics since 1992, nobody stopped fighting about it.
[00:03:27]  Everybody still wanted the chance to debate and discuss and have their legislatures set policy.
[00:03:34]  And finally, it happens four years ago.