Justice Barrett Defends Dobbs Decision, Admits She Had To Buy Bullet-Proof Vest Afterward

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett defended the 2022 decision overturning landmark abortion cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey during a recent interview — and also admitted that the public protest in reaction to that case caused her to invest in a bulletproof vest for her own protection.

Barrett, in her first interview since joining the court in 2020, told CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell that the Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization had not outlawed abortion at all, but rather had returned it to the democratic process. She also said that both Roe and Casey had wrongfully defended a “right” that did not exist under the Constitution.

WATCH:

Must Watch: Justice Amy Coney Barrett sets the record straight on the majority’s message to the American people in the Dobbs decision:

“The central message of Dobbs: Dobbs did not render abortion illegal. Dobbs did not say anything about whether abortion is immoral. Dobbs said… pic.twitter.com/isFjhf8NdM

— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) September 8, 2025

“The central message of Dobbs: Dobbs did not render abortion illegal. Dobbs did not say anything about whether abortion is immoral. Dobbs said that these are questions that are left to the states. … What Dobbs says is that those calls are properly left to the democratic process, and the states have been working those out,” Barrett said.

“The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs gave that decision to the democratic process and to the states,” Barrett said. “It didn’t roll back rights. It didn’t render abortion illegal, unconstitutional, or anything else. And in effect, many states very fully protected abortion rights, more than under the regime of Roe since the time of the decision in Dobbs.”

O’Donnell pushed back, arguing that overturning Roe had stripped away “a federal right to abortion. A constitutional right to an abortion.”

Barrett argued that such a right had never existed in the first place — and that both Roe and Casey “had been in error” to assert that it had.

“Well, what it said is that the Constitution had not protected the abortion right under the Due Process Clause. And it said that Roe had been an error and Casey had been in error to hold otherwise,” she said.

The protests that erupted both before and after the decision was rendered — particularly after a leaked draft of the decision went public — prompted Barrett to take action to protect herself. She told O’Donnell that she’d purchased a bullet-proof vest — and then had to explain to her own children why she’d felt the need to do so.