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FACT CHECK: Donald Trump’s Supreme Court Would End Safe, Legal Abortion

For Immediate Release: Oct. 20, 2016


Washington, DC — Donald Trump would appoint some of the most extreme and conservative Supreme Court justices America has ever seen.

Trump would use the Supreme Court to try and eliminate access to safe, legal abortion.

  • Trump said Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. [The Brody File,2/18/16]

  • Trump said being anti-abortion would be a litmus test for SCOTUS nominees. [CNN’s State of the Union,6/28/15]

  • Mike Pence said that if Trump is elected, “We’ll see Roe vs. Wade consigned to the ash heap of history where it belongs.” [The Los Angeles Times,7/29/16]

  • Trump said the “biggest way” to ban abortion is “by electing me president”: “Asked on Fox News what one thing he would do to ‘protect the sanctity of life,’ Trump told host Bill O’Reilly, ‘I will protect it, and the biggest way you can protect it is through the Supreme Court and putting people on the court. Actually, the biggest way you can protect it, I guess, is by electing me president.’” [Huffington Post,5/11/16]

  • Trump said that women should be punished for having an abortion. Duringan MSNBC town hall with Chris Matthews, he was asked whether and how he would ban abortion.  [MSNBC, Hardball with Chris Matthews,3/30/16 (2:26-2:33)]

  • Trump released a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, many of whom have a record of failing to protect women’s access to reproductive health care.

  • “Several of the judges on Mr. Trump’s list have questioned abortion rights.” [New York Times,5/19/16]

  • Trump’s list includes Judge William Pryor, who has called Roe v. Wade “the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law.” [AP,5/10/16]

  • Many of the judges Trump has proposed “think the First Amendment protects a religious group’s right to discriminate against gays, and plutocrats’ right to buy elections, but not the free speech of students or abortion doctors” and “they don’t like economic regulation, abortion, or contraception, but they don’t mind stringent voting restrictions.” [Slate,5/18/16]

  • Trump’s Supreme Court nominees are also anti-contraception. “Most of those on the short list hew closely to social conservatives' views on abortion and contraception, particularly when it comes to the contraceptive mandate created in the Affordable Care Act.” [Mother Jones,5/18/16]

  • One potential Trump nominee, Edward Mansfield, wrote in an opinion in 2012 ruling that it was not illegal for a dentist to have fired an employee he considered attractive because his wife felt she was a threat to their marriage. [Salt Lake Tribune,12/21/12]

  • As a 10th Circuit judge, Neil Gorsuch, another potential Trump nominee, agreed that  Hobby Lobby and similar  corporations had a right to deny employees coverage of birth control. [Wall Street Journal,6/27/13]

  • Gorsuch also sided with Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic group  seeking  an exemption from complying with the Affordable Care Act’s birth control provision . [The Advocate,9/24/16]

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