SEATTLE — U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi warned Wednesday that marriage equality and other constitutional rights could soon be in danger if the draft opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court striking down Roe v. Wade is finalized.
Speaking in person with The Seattle Times editorial board Wednesday, Pelosi assailed the opinion for “the violence it does to the Constitution” and said it “mocked” Roe v. Wade, privacy and a woman’s right to choose.
“It has an impact beyond a woman’s right to choose,” Pelosi said. “The next thing could be gay marriage equality, there’s so many other things that once you’ve dispensed with precedent and privacy that they could have the majority to do.”
Pelosi and U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene, D-Wash., met with the editorial board as the speaker made several Seattle-area appearances to promote the $1.9 trillion dollar COVID relief legislation and the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress. (The Seattle Times newsroom operates independently of the editorial board.)
Pelosi outlined no plan for House Democrats — who have already passed a bill codifying the protections of Roe v. Wade — beyond building public sentiment against the opinion. The Democratic bill, the Women’s Health Protection Act, has failed to even garner a majority in the Senate, much less the 60 votes it would require to overcome a filibuster.
“You know all politics is local, all politics is personal when it comes to this,” she said. “It’s an abomination what they did, you have to read it.
“The very idea that they would be telling women the size, timing or whatever of their family, the personal nature of this is so appalling, and I say that as a devout Catholic,” Pelosi said. “They say to me, ‘Nancy Pelosi thinks she knows more about having babies than the pope.’ Yes I do. Are you stupid?”
Republicans, she said, would like to talk about how the draft leaked and what the repercussions of the leak might be.
“What I’m telling my members is don’t get hung up on that,” she said. “Forget about that. What we’re talking about that is it’s leaked and this is what it is.”
In a prepared statement immediately after the draft leaked Monday night, Pelosi said that several conservative justices “lied to the U.S. Senate, ripped up the Constitution and defiled both precedent and the Supreme Court’s reputation.”
“Look at that, Kavanaugh saying over and over again, precedent, precedent, precedent,” she said Wednesday, referring to Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation hearings.
But, she said, now is not the time to consider any sort of court reform.
“I feel quite strongly that the Republicans would like us talking about expanding the court, talking about this, that and the other thing,” she said. “But for now, for now, we have to just keep our eye completely straight where it needs to be on these people undermining, doing violence to the Constitution, to privacy, to precedent and to women and their personal decisions.”
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