Demonstrations celebrating and protesting Friday's Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade's abortion protections continued to reverberate across the country Sunday. The demonstrations have been largely peaceful, although damage and temporary road closures were reported in some cities.
Abortion opponents are celebrating a long-sought victory for the conservative legal movement, one made possible by the presidency of Donald Trump. "This is a huge victory for the pro-life movement," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on "Fox News Sunday."
Trump -- who nominated three of the six conservative justices on the court -- whipped up his supporters at an Illinois rally Saturday night, and lawmakers were looking toward the midterm elections in November with varying focuses on the post-Roe landscape.
President Joe Biden criticized the Supreme Court on Saturday, saying the justices have "made some terrible decisions." He is in Europe this week to meet with leaders of the Group of Seven nations.
The vote was 6-3 to uphold a restrictive Mississippi law. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., though, criticized his conservative colleagues for taking the additional step of overturning Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which had reaffirmed the right to abortion.
In their joint dissent, the court's three liberal justices took note of the states that will move quickly to restrict abortion access and emphasized the sweeping impact of the court's decision on the rights of women to terminate their pregnancies.
Appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday morning, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said he does not advocate for a national ban on abortion. Hutchinson, whose term expires in January, has expressed interest in running for president in 2024. Another possible candidate, former Vice President Mike Pence, has come out publicly in support of a national ban.
"I don't believe we ought to go back to saying there ought to be a national law," Hutchinson said Sunday when asked by program host Chuck Todd if he would support a national ban. "We fought for 50 years to have this returned to the states. We've won that battle, it's back to the states. Let's let it be resolved there."
Hutchinson defended the state's trigger law, Act 190, although it does not include exemptions for rape and incest. However, when Todd ask him if he was happy with the fact that, under the law, a 9-year-old child raped by a family member would be required to carry the child to term, he said he wasn't.
"I'd have preferred a different outcome than that," he said. "But that's not the debate today in Arkansas. It might be in the future but, for now, the law triggered with only one exception."
Hutchinson said the Supreme Court's decision is a limited one, affecting only abortion. He pointed out that no other justices joined in Justice Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion that called for overturning landmark rulings on contraceptives and same-sex marriage.
"This is not about contraceptions," Hutchinson said. "This is not about same-sex marriage. A very limited decision on this particular issue of abortion. So in Arkansas, the right to contraception is important, it's recognized, and it's not going to be touched."
CALL FOR ARRESTS
Graham on Sunday called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to arrest protesters outside the homes of conservative Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
"I'm urging Merrick Garland to start putting people in jail who show up to the justices' home to try to intimidate them and their family," Graham said on "Fox News Sunday."
Abortion rights advocates on Friday protested outside the Virginia home of Justice Clarence Thomas. Members of the crowd called the justice's wife, Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, an "insurrectionist," referring to her efforts to overturn the 2020 election and her attendance at a "Stop the Steal" rally before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. A small crowd of protesters also gathered outside the Maryland home of Justice Neil Gorsuch on Saturday.
Earlier this month, Biden signed a bill to provide around-the-clock security to the families of Supreme Court justices. The measure passed shortly after the leak of the draft Roe opinion.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is calling for the House Judiciary Committee to investigate Supreme Court justices who she says lied under oath during their confirmation hearings with regard to Roe v. Wade.
Days ago, Sens. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, had suggested that Brett Kavanaugh and Gorsuch had misled them in private meetings during their confirmation process about not overturning Roe v. Wade.
On NBC News' "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez noted that such misleading comments would constitute a "crisis of legitimacy" in the Supreme Court, particularly after the justices issued a ruling "that deeply undermines the human and civil rights of the majority of Americans." She added that lying under oath should be an impeachable offense for a Supreme Court justice.
"There must be consequences for such a deeply destabilizing action and hostile takeover of our democratic institutions. To allow that to stand is to allow it to happen," Ocasio-Cortez said. "And what makes it particularly dangerous is that it sends a blaring signal to all future nominees that they can now lie to duly elected members of the United States Senate in order to secure ... confirmations and seats on the Supreme Court."
Ocasio-Cortez, who is not a member of the House Judiciary Committee, also criticized Thomas for not recusing himself in Supreme Court cases involving the 2020 presidential election after it emerged that his wife pursued efforts to overturn the election's results. In March, Ocasio-Cortez had also called for an investigation of Thomas' potential conflicts of interest and suggested he could be impeached.
LAWSUIT FILED
Planned Parenthood Association of Utah filed a lawsuit Saturday seeking to block the state's ban on abortion, which came into effect after the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Utah has outlawed abortion, with exceptions in cases of rape, incest and to save the life of the woman, becoming one of eight states to have an abortion ban take effect Friday after the court rescinded the constitutional right to an abortion. Several more bans are expected to take effect in the coming days and weeks.
The lawsuit in Utah argues that the state's ban violates several provisions in the state constitution, including the right to determine family composition and the right to equality between the sexes.
The Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, which said it provides health care to about 46,000 people each year at eight health centers, is also seeking a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunctive relief to stop the ban from being implemented.
"In one terrible moment, Roe v. Wade was overturned, and Utah residents' power to control their own bodies, lives and personal medical decisions was threatened," Karrie Galloway, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Association of Utah, said in a statement.
Under the ban, abortions are allowed in cases of rape or incest, to avert the death of or "serious risk" of impairment of a bodily function to a pregnant woman or if two doctors determine the fetus has a "uniformly lethal" defect.
In the lawsuit, which was filed in the 3rd Judicial District Court for Salt Lake County, Planned Parenthood said that it had to stop performing abortions immediately after the ban went into effect and that it would have to cancel 55 abortion appointments scheduled for this week unless temporary relief was granted.
The organization said that forced pregnancy would have a "dramatic, negative" effect on families' financial stability and that in 2021, 45% of its abortion patients reported earning less than 130% of the federal poverty level.
The defendants include Utah's attorney general, Sean Reyes, and governor, Spencer Cox. Cox said in a statement Friday that he "wholeheartedly" supported the Supreme Court's decision.
The attorney general's office declined to comment, and the governor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit, which also claimed the ban violates Utah's constitutional protections to privacy, bodily integrity, involuntary servitude and religious freedom.
Planned Parenthood Association of Utah said that at the time the lawsuit was filed, the three nearest abortion clinics were more than 200 miles away from Salt Lake City, in Wyoming, Idaho and Colorado.
The lawsuit cautioned that abortion bans were set to take effect in the near future in Idaho and Wyoming.
Information for this article was contributed by Maxine Joselow and Amy B Wang of The Washington Post; Amanda Holpuch of The New York Times; and Jack Mitchell of The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Gallery: United States, post-Roe, day 3
