By a vote of 52-48, the US Senate confirmed Amy Coney Barrett as an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. Barrett replaces Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died on September 18, 2020.
Barrett adheres to the same judicial philosophy as Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom Barrett clerked in the late 1990s. As a result, most observers believe she will be far more willing to allow states to regulate and perhaps even prohibit abortion. Scalia rejected the Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade to create a constitutional right to abortion. Barrett was a member of the Notre Dame chapter of University Faculty for Life before she became a federal court of appeals judge in 2017.
In addition, it seems doubtful that Barrett will be receptive to arguments to create a constitutional right to assisted suicide. The Court rejected constitutional challenges to laws banning assisted suicide in 1997 in Washington v. Glucksberg, but some observers have speculated that the Court might willing to revisit Glucksberg. That now seems far less likely.