For Trump's appointees, judgment day comes ever nearer

The growing gap between what the six conservative judges say and do threatens to ruin the court’s legitimacy

- Ed Pilkington

About 11 minutes into last week’s hearing on abortion rights at the US supreme court, Sonia Sotomayor, one of the three liberal-leaning justices left on the court after its sharp rightward shift under Donald Trump , took the floor.

Sotomayor began by noting that, in the past 30 years, 15 justices from varying political backgrounds had supported the right to abortion up to the point of foetal viability. Only four had objected.

Now, after so many years of relative consensus, the legality of abortion enshrined in the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v Wade and reaffirmed in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v Casey was on the line.

Politicians in Mississippi, Sotomayor remarked ( leaving it unsaid that they were rightwing Republicans), had devised legislation to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. By these politicians’ admission, their bills were targeted specifically at the three new justices on the supreme court (all appointed by Trump, though she did not mention that either).

She addressed the danger posed by the court’s apparently politically motivated change of heart to abortion rights and the rule of law itself.