Senator and Senate Judiciary Committee member Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) concurred on Tuesday with Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s assessment of Roe v. Wade as “settled law” — yet wondered aloud if the landmark 1973 decision is “correct law.”
“I think it’s really important that people, as well as the judge, the nominee, understand how strongly we feel and why we feel that way,” Feinstein began. “I want to talk a bit about one of the big decisions that we have the belief that, although you told Sen. Collins that you believed it was settled law, the question is really, do you believe that it’s correct law? And that’s Roe v. Wade.”
Touting her experiences as a college student in the 1950s and subsequent role on California’s Women’s Parole Board, Feinstein said she witnessed both the “terrible side and the human and vulnerable side” of abortion.
She said:
I was in the 50s and 60s, active, first as a student at Stanford. I saw what happened to young women who became pregnant, and then, subsequently, I sat as an appointee of Gov. Brown on the terms-setting and paroling authority for women in California who had committed felonies. I sentenced women who had committed abortions to state prison and granted them paroles. I came to see both sides–the terrible side and the human and vulnerable side. When you look at the statistics during those days, those statistics of the Guttmacher Institute has put out are really horrendous.
“For you, the president who nominated you, has said I will nominate someone who is anti-choice and pro-gun, and we believe what he said. We cannot find the documents that absolve from that conclusion,” she added.
“What women have, one, through Roe and a host of privacy cases, to be able to control their own reproductive systems, to have basic privacy rights, are really extraordinarily important to this side of the aisle, and I hope to the other side of the aisle, as well.”