AP FACT CHECK: Senators misrepresent Jackson on abortion

Republican senators are painting Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson as broadly hostile to anti-abortion views

Republican senators painted Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson as hostile to anti-abortion views, twisting words from a legal brief she co-signed years ago as evidence she would rule broadly against abortion opponents.

That's a misrepresentation.

A look at some of the statements during three days of confirmation hearings:

TENNESSEE SEN. MARSHA BLACKBURN: “I want to go to you on something you said when you were in private practice. You made your views on pro-life and the pro-life movement very clear. And in fact, you attacked pro-life women. And this was in a brief that you wrote. You described them, and I’m quoting, ‘Hostile, noisy crowd of in-your-face protesters.' ... How do you justify that incendiary rhetoric against pro-life women? ... Let me ask you this. When you go to church, and knowing there are pro-life women there, do you look at them, thinking of them in that way, that they’re noisy, hostile, in-your-face?” — remarks Tuesday.

NORTH CAROLINA SEN. THOM TILLIS: “I’m not necessarily saying you put those words in the brief, but they were in there, and they were ‘hostile, noisy crowd.'" — remarks Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Blackburn takes a line in a legal brief out of context and unfairly suggests it represents Jackson’s broader judicial and personal views. Tillis was more measured. The brief, which Jackson co-signed as a young attorney in a law firm, did not refer to all anti-abortion women as “hostile” and “noisy” but was making a legal argument on behalf of a client in regards to protesters outside abortion clinics.

The case involved a Massachusetts law that provided for an 18-foot buffer zone around the clinics that would give women space from protesters from both sides of the abortion debate, who might try to approach them. Despite what Blackburn suggests, the case did not involve or refer to “pro-life women” more broadly.

The opening lines of the factual statement in the 2001 brief state:

“Few American citizens who seek to exercise constitutionally protected rights must run a gauntlet through a hostile, noisy crowd of ‘in-your-face’ protesters. Still fewer citizens, when seeking medical or surgical care — particularly care involving deeply private matters — must confront a crowd swarming around them, shouting in their faces, blocking their way, and thrusting disturbing photographs and objects at them.”

“Yet on any given day, patients of reproductive health clinics may face all of these. A woman may be on her way to take an HIV test, to undergo day surgery, to receive a mammogram, or to receive counseling about an intimate physical matter. But regardless of her condition or her needs, when a woman’s intention to enter one of these clinics becomes manifest, she becomes an occasion for protest. Demonstrators may swarm around her or her vehicle. Simply to get in the door, she may have to endure physical and emotional intimidation, heightened stress resulting in increased physical pain for surgery patients, unwanted exposure, and violations of personal space.”

Asked about the brief on Tuesday and Wednesday, Jackson said she worked on the case after joining a private law firm that represented a group advocating for a buffer zone. She said the Massachusetts law was not directed at abortion rights opponents but rather women and men protesting on both sides. The Supreme Court in later years struck down the law after the buffer zone was widened to 35 feet.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — A look at the veracity of claims by political figures.

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