Sandra Day O’Connor, Supreme Court justice who reaffirmed Roe v. Wade, dies at 93

Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who sided with the pro-abortion majorities in key cases such as Planned Parenthood v. Casey, died on Friday, December 1. She was 93.

An announcement from the United States Supreme Court said that O’Connor died in Phoenix, Arizona, from complications related to dementia, which is presumed to have been Alzheimer’s, combined with a respiratory illness. She was the first woman to serve on the Supreme Court, a position she held from 1981 until 2006.

News of O’Connor’s death has sparked salutations on social media from both Democrat and Republican politicians alike. Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson both expressed condolences to O’Connor’s family and gratitude for her service.

O’Connor was appointed by former Republican President Ronald Reagan...

O’Connor sided with the reaffirmation of a supposed Constitutional “right” to abortion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 1992. The decision in this case upheld the previously instituted protections for abortion under the court’s notorious ruling in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

In 2000, O’Connor once again sided with the pro-abortion majority in Stenberg v. Carhart to approve a “right” to partial-birth abortion.

Justice Samuel Alito, who succeeded O’Connor upon her retirement in 2006, wrote the landmark opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, published in June 2022, which revoked the so-called Constitutional “right” to abortion in the United States and reversed the long-held abortion protections in Roe that O’Connor had supported.