Conservative law professor Michael McConnell has published an op-ed in the Washington Post essentially telling the nation to take a chill pill about the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States. Replacing liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit “would not end abortion rights,” he says. Unfortunately, his argument rests on errors a constitutional law professor at Stanford should not make and is misleading about the security of Roe v. Wade and abortion rights in the Supreme Court after Barrett fills Ginsburg’s seat.

In the op-ed, McConnell tries to reassure the large portion of the American public who approve of women’s constitutional reproductive rights that Roe has not in the past been overruled despite numerous Supreme Court appointments by conservative presidents starting with Ronald Reagan. And according to McConnell, it “will not be lightly overruled” by the court even with Barrett installed. As supporting evidence, he argues: “Roe was reaffirmed this summer, in effect, by June Medical, with a majority opinion written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., an appointee of President George W. Bush.”

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