U.S. emerges from day of protests, celebrations

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. More rallies were scheduled for Sunday.

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 to 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.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, defended the trigger law that went into effect in his state after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday. The Arkansas law bans abortions in all instances except to save the life of the mother.

Hutchinson, who had expressed unease about the lack of exceptions for rape and incest in his state’s trigger law, on Sunday demurred when asked whether he was comfortable with the fact that a 13-year-old girl in Arkansas raped by a relative would no longer be able to get an abortion in the state.

“I would prefer a different outcome than that. But that’s not the debate today in Arkansas,” Hutchinson said on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” “It might be in the future, but for now, the law triggered with only one exception. While you can debate whether there ought to be additional exceptions, every state is going to make a different determination. … But at this particular point, the only exception in Arkansas is to save the life of the mother.”

Hutchinson also sought to assure women in Arkansas that they would have continued access to contraception, including the Plan B pill and intrauterine devices, or IUDs. “In Arkansas, the right to contraception is important. It’s recognized. It’s not going to be touched,” he said.

Hutchinson, who has not ruled out a 2024 presidential run, was asked whether he would advocate for and sign into law a nationwide abortion ban, as former vice president Mike Pence – another potential Republican 2024 presidential candidate – has said he would.

“I don’t believe that we ought to go back to saying there ought to be a national law that’s passed,” Hutchinson said. “We’ve fought for 50 years to have this return to the states. We’ve won that battle. It’s back to the states. Let’s let it be resolved there.”

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’s “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’s potential conflicts of interest and suggested he could be impeached.