Bill Moyers
Justice O'Connor will not discuss the controversial issues that keep coming to the court. abortion. Above all, she says as do other justices, that it would be improper for her to do so. But one of her major opinions on the court has caused alarm amongst supporters of abortion, about how she might rule on future cases. During her confirmation hearings in 1981, she had this to say,
Sandra Day O'Connor
I do not believe that as a nominee, I can tell you how I might vote on a particular issue, which may come before the court or endorse or criticize specific Supreme Court decisions presenting issues which may well come before the court again,
Bill Moyers
triggered a stormy controversy with the decision on Roe vs wade in 1973. ruling that a woman has the fundamental right to an abortion during the first three months of pregnancy, the first trimester, the state could only outlaw abortion altogether in the third trimester when the fetus is considered viable when it can live outside the womb. In 1983, in a case from Akron, Ohio, the court reaffirmed Roe versus Wade, it struck down regulations passed by the City Council that would make abortions more difficult to obtain. The court has never said that you may not regulate abortion in the interest of the life or the health of the unborn child has just never faced that question. Feminists leaders claimed another victory for women.
Sandra Day O'Connor
And I think what they were hoping to use that as a precedent for the rest of the nation.
Bill Moyers
But the woman they had once praised disagreed. Justice O'Connor argued that because the Akron laws did not impose an undue burden on the right to seek an abortion, the court was obligated to uphold state law. And she wrote what some legal scholar say, could provide the intellectual basis for ultimately overturning the right to end abortion. Roe vs. Wade, she said is on a collision course with itself. This is from her opinion, Justice improvements and medical technology inevitably move forward the point at which the state may regulate for reasons of maternal health, different technological improvements will move backward the point of viability and in the final sentence of her descent, she wrote, I believe the state's interest in protecting human life exists throughout the pregnancy. Nothing you've written on this Court has so caused concern, then your statement that Roe vs. Wade is on a collision course with itself. Meaning that what the court has decided may come back to be decided again.
How's that going to happen?
Sandra Day O'Connor
I just think we probably have not seen the end of cases in this area cases and one subject area yet tend to come up with some frequency until the issues are thoroughly threshed out and resolved. And that's true in every area.
Bill Moyers
You said in your hearings that you found abortion morally repugnant? Doesn't that mean you have to vote against it when it comes to this court?
Sandra Day O'Connor
You just like any other case, you take the case. And you see what the issue is, more often than not, it's a state statute that when reviewing, to see whether it passes muster under the Federal Constitution, and you look at this particular statute, look at the case, look at the issue, look at the facts and try to apply them.
Bill Moyers
So even if you personally disagree with what you think the law says should be the ruling. You're going to rule that way. You're not going to declare something legally improper, because you found it morally improper?
Sandra Day O'Connor
No. I mean, you you have you have this overriding obligation up here to enforce and apply and support and defend the Constitution.
Bill Moyers
That's what we're here to do. Would you say you are the constitution?
Sandra Day O'Connor
You are not
Bill Moyers
telling me what the Constitution is? I mean, if you say that women have a right to an abortion, the Constitution says that backs you up, if you take it away and say they don't we all live with you or the Constitution,
Sandra Day O'Connor
over certainly called upon to interpret it our way.
Bill Moyers
What's the hardest thing about interpreting
Sandra Day O'Connor
some cases are more difficult than others simply because the precedents aren't clear or the court hasn't resolved the issues in the past or something of that sort.
Bill Moyers
But once you declare something in an opinion as strongly as you did, the Akron case, where you ended your very discursive opinion, saying that the state has a interest in pregnancy from beginning to end. How would you decided the next cases?
Sandra Day O'Connor
I don't know what the next case is going to be?
Bill Moyers
So you keep it open to what the facts of the case?
Sandra Day O'Connor
Every case,
I try to do that.
Bill Moyers
Yes, indeed. That's what's been bad narrow tailoring.
To the facts of the case.
Sandra Day O'Connor
Why do I think we are limited under the Constitution, cases of controversies and we take them as they come to us.