Republican presidential candidate John Kasich told a voter in New Hampshire Wednesday that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in the United States is the “law of the land.”
“I would like to ask whether you can respect the Roe versus Wade decision, and I ask because as a lifelong libertarian, I’m looking for a candidate to support who is both a fiscal conservative and not a threat to a woman’s right to control her own body,” said a voter at a town hall event in Salem, New Hampshire.
“Obviously, it’s the law of the land now, and we live with the law of the land,” Kasich replied. Watch the video below:
Earlier this week, in an interview with CNN, Kasich suggested Republicans focus “too much” on the issue of abortion at the expense of other issues like “early childhood, infant mortality, the environment, education.”
A request to Kasich’s campaign from THE WEEKLY STANDARD for further comment about Roe v. Wade has not yet been returned. (The campaign has responded. See update.)
As governor of Ohio, Kasich has overseen a drop in his state’s abortion rate to all-time lows, signing into law a budget that defunded Planned Parenthood in his state and a ban on abortions performed after the fetus can be viable outside the womb. Kasich was endorsed by Ohio’s Right to Life organization in his 2014 reelection bit.
Update: Kasich campaign spokesman Chris Schrimpf responds by noting that in a press availability after the event, the Ohio governor touted his pro-life record. Here’s what Kasich said, according to Schrimpf: “There are restrictions that we put in, we’ve done a lot of things in Ohio effecting abortions after 20 weeks, but until that law changes, that’s the law. If the court makes a ruling, they make a ruling, but I think there are absolutely legitimate and constitutional restrictions that can be put on it.”
The Cincinnati Enquirer also noted that Kasich said it’s the law “until that law changes.”
Asked about Kasich’s own judicial appointments if he were elected president, Schrimpf did not say whether Kasich would apply a “litmus test” with respect to overturning Roe. “He respects the constitutionally-proscribed independence of the judiciary, but in the judicial appointments he has made as governor he has consistently sought judges who, as President Reagan said, practice ‘judicial restraint,’ and understand that the courts are not ‘vehicles for political action and social experimentation’ and he would pursue that approach as President,” said Schrimpf in an email.
