SALON

Wednesday, Mar 6, 2013 6:05 PM UTC

Sandra Day O’Connor’s very dry interview with Terry Gross

The retired Supreme Court justice gave an informative, but oftentimes abrupt, interview with NPR

By

Topics: terry gross, NPR, sandra day o'connor, Supreme Court,

Sandra Day O'Connor's very dry interview with Terry Gross (Credit: AP Photo Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the first woman to serve on the Court, spoke with “Fresh Air’s” Terry Gross yesterday about her reputation as a swing voter (a term O’Connor detests) on the politically divided court. Among O’Connor’s swing decisions, she co-authored a decision supporting a woman’s right to choose, re-affirming Roe v. Wade, and voted to end the recount in Bush v. Gore. But O’Connor, who served for nearly 25 years on the court, didn’t elaborate on the decisions with Gross. Instead, she deflected:

On abortion:

GROSS: In one of the decisions that you wrote about pertaining to abortion, you explain why you would not agree to overturn Roe v. Wade. And you wrote: The mother who carries a child to full term is subject to anxieties, to physical constraints, to a point that only she must bear. That these sacrifices have from the beginning of the human race been endured by woman with a pride that ennobles her in the eyes of others and gives to the infant a bond of love cannot alone be grounds for the state to insist she make the sacrifice. Her suffering is too intimate and personal for the state to insist upon its own vision of the woman’s role, however dominant that vision has been in the course of our history and culture. The destiny of the woman must be shaped to a large extent on her own conception of her spiritual imperative and her place in society.

Did being a woman and being a mother inform how you wrote that?

O’CONNOR: Well, I’m sure it would have.

GROSS: Can you elaborate on that?

O’CONNOR: Well, no, just I’m female. I am a mother. I’ve gone through all of that. And I’m sure in something as sensitive as the issues that we were considering with abortion rulings and so forth, that my own personal background would’ve had some affect on my decisions. It couldn’t help but have.

GROSS: In Casey versus Planned Parenthood, which was a decision in Pennsylvania about a state’s right to add restrictions on access to abortion, you had harsh words for Judge Alito. This was before he was a Supreme Court justice, but he had written part of the decision in Casey. In his decision he upheld a certain restriction, which was that a woman had to seek her husband’s approval before getting an abortion. A wife had to seek her husband’s approval. And in your decision in the Supreme Court overturning that aspect of the decision you called that view repugnant to our present understanding of marriage and to the nature of the rights secured by the Constitution. Women do not lose their constitutionally-protected liberty when they marry. Can you elaborate on that at all?

O’CONNOR: No. I don’t think I’ll try.

GROSS: OK.

O’CONNOR: That’s very sensitive and I did the best I could in that decision and I’ll leave it there.

On Bush v. Gore:

GROSS: My experience is that justices don’t like to talk about this decision, but can I ask you about Bush v. Gore or do you have a no discussion about it?

O’CONNOR: Well, I don’t want to discuss things that I’ve done that require me to look back and say what if.

GROSS: This isn’t a what – well, I don’t think this is a what if. Maybe I can ask the question and you can tell me if you’re comfortable answering.

O’CONNOR: Well, ask and I’ll deal with it.

GROSS: OK. OK. Good. So, you know, the decision was a five to four decision. It deeply divided the country. People who disagreed with the decision thought the Supreme Court had prevented a legitimate recount in Florida, thereby handing the presidency over to George W. Bush. You voted to end the recount. I don’t know if you’ve read Jeffrey Toobin’s on the subject, but he said on …

O’CONNOR: No. I haven’t.

GROSS: He said on our show that you later regretted the decision and you …

O’CONNOR: Well, I don’t know why he said that. I’ve not said that myself and it’s not anything I would want to weigh in on. There’s no point in my, at this point, saying I regret some decision I made. I’m not going to do that.

GROSS: OK. So you say you never really said that.

O’CONNOR: I hope I didn’t.

O’Connor has written a book on the court’s history, “Out of Order.”

Prachi Gupta is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on pop culture. Follow her on Twitter at @prachigu or email her at pgupta@salon.com. More Prachi Gupta.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 29 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations