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Grassley says abortion law belongs to individual states

U.S. Senator Charles Grassley during a stop in Ft. Madison
Will Buss
/
TSPR
U.S. Senator Charles Grassley during a stop in Ft. Madison

During a stop in southeast Iowa, U.S. Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) said he believes the Supreme Court’s recent decision to overturn legalized abortion rightfully removes the courts and pushes individual states to set abortion policy.

Grassley visited with workers at Huffman Welding & Machine Inc. in Ft. Madison. Workers asked the senator about the June 24 ruling that reversed the Court’s 1973 decision to legalize abortions established in Roe v. Wade.

Grassley, the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the judiciary should not be creating abortion law or any other laws.

“You're asking a question that makes it look like the Supreme Court ought to be a political body,” Grassley said.

“They are judicial, and so what they're really saying is this is not a decision for us unelected people. This ought to be a decision for the individual state legislature to let the people of the states make that determination through their elected representatives. So, it gets back to a very basic principle going back to the writing of the Constitution. Judges interpret law. They don't make laws. We make law on the legislature. The president enforces those laws. So, they're getting back to something very basic.”

Although most Americans support abortion rights, Grassley said reversing Roe v. Wade confirms that the Court had weak legal reasoning to establish the constitutional right to abortion.

“They were in effect saying that the Court in 1973 was acting in a way it should not,” Grassley said.

As the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2016, Grassley refused to consider President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland. Following President Trump’s election to office later that year, Neil Gorsuch was nominated and appointed to the court.

Grassley is the longest-serving senator in Iowa’s history. The 88-year-old is running for his eighth-consecutive term in the Senate in the fall elections. He will face Democratic candidate Michael Franken.

Tri States Public Radio produced this story.  TSPR relies on financial support from our readers and listeners in order to provide coverage of the issues that matter to west central Illinois, southeast Iowa, and northeast Missouri. As someone who values the content created by TSPR's news department please consider making a financial contribution.