MY SAY: THE REMARKABLE SANDRA DAY O’CONNOR-THE FIRST WOMAN APPOINTED TO THE SUPREME COURT (1981 to 2006)
Quotes:
The freedom to criticize judges and other public officials is necessary to a vibrant democracy. The problem comes when healthy criticism is replaced with more destructive intimidation and sanctions.”
– Sandra Day O’ Connor.
“The power I exert on the court depends on the power of my arguments, not on my gender.”
– Sandra Day O’ Connor.
On Roe v. Wade
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/sandra-day-oconnor-and-reconsideration-roe-v-wade/
Her first public [Supreme Court] opinion on abortion came in the Akron case in 1983 [Akron v. Akron Center For Reproductive Health]. She had been on the court for two years. The Akron case served up to the court a series of abortion restrictions that really challenged Roe v. Wade [including requirements for: all abortions performed after the first trimester to be done in hospitals, parental consent before the procedure could be performed on an unmarried minor, doctors to counsel prospective patients, a 24 hour waiting period and that fetal remains be disposed of in a “humane and sanitary manner.”]. The court reaffirmed Roe, and O’Connor dissented, [saying, “I believe that the State’s interest in protecting potential human life exists throughout the pregnancy.”]
There were four justices opposed to that, and there were four justices fully for that. And everybody assumed that O’Connor was going to be also fully for undercutting Roe. But she wouldn’t go along. She wrote a separate opinion, deciding the case very narrowly. She said there may be time in the future to deal with the bigger, deeper issue, but that time has not arrived.
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