A review of [Reagan appointee] Sandra Day O’Connor’s career reveals why the judicial nominee process has become so heated and why new laws had to pass . . . ‘the O’Connor test.’
. . . In the early days of her tenure, O’Connor did vote to uphold restrictions on abortion and against an expansive view of Roe v. Wade - in City of Akron v. Akron Center for Reproductive Health in 1983 and in Thornburgh v. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in 1986, with impressive dissents against invalidating common sense regulations. That started to change in 1989 in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services when she sided with the majority to uphold a Missouri statute that prohibited use of public facilities or personnel to perform abortions and required ultrasound tests to determine viability after 20 weeks, but refused to overturn Roe. The following year O’Connor solidified her role as the court’s abortion swing vote in Hodgson v. Minnesota where she decided to strike down Minnesota’s law that required two parent notification before a minor could get an abortion, but upheld it when there was a judicial bypass option in place.
But the real kicker was in 1992 when she and Justice David Souter heavily lobbied Justice Anthony Kennedy who had voted in 1989 to overturn Roe to change his vote. In his book The Nine, Jeffery Toobin chronicles the highly unusual effort by these two justices to convince Kennedy that the nation simply wasn’t ready to overturn Roe. Their efforts paid off and the Supreme Court mandate that abortion cannot be outlawed remained. Over 20 million more abortions have happened in the 19 years since.
O’Connor didn’t stop there. In 2000 she sided with the majority in Stenberg v. Carhart to approve a right to partial-birth abortion. LifeSiteNews
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