The 64-year-old appointee of George W. Bush has never endorsed abortion rights or ever voted to invalidate a tough regulation.
Whether such laws are enforced in upcoming months and years likely rests with Roberts. And his 14-year record as chief justice and recent public signals, in the wake of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s replacement of Justice Anthony Kennedy, reveal two relevant traits for predicting the man in the center chair.
Roberts works incrementally, laying groundwork for his views, keeping an eye to upcoming cases, and avoiding any “jolt” to precedent, as he pledged at his 2005 Senate confirmation hearings.
He is also mightily concerned about the reputation of the Supreme Court and public regard for its legitimacy, and his own.
It is unlikely Roberts, who has pondered aloud what history will make of him, would want his legacy clinched by reversal of the 1973 landmark so drenched in the nation’s politics.
Yet, that is not the end of the matter in the current charged climate over women’s reproductive rights. Roberts could join his conservative brethren to reduce access to clinics that perform abortions and endorse other measures — such as tighter regulation of physicians — that diminish a women’s ability to terminate a pregnancy.
If he takes that path, the 1973 Roe and cases since then that forbid government from imposing an “undue burden” on women seeking to abort a fetus before viability would not be outright overturned.
Still, Roberts would be breaking from Kennedy’s pattern and disrupting life in America. In 2013, he readily turned away from entrenched Supreme Court legal reasoning as he took the lead for the conservatives to eviscerate a major part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, in the case of Shelby County v. Holder.
RELATED: Where John Roberts is unlikely to compromise
Roberts’ public message
Soon after the tumultuous Senate confirmation of Kavanaugh last October, Roberts pointedly differentiated the role of justices from that of elected officials.
“We speak for the Constitution,” he declared in a speech in Minnesota. “Our role is clear. We are to interpret the laws and Constitution of the United States and ensure that the political branches act within them.
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USA — Financial John Roberts has voted for restrictions on abortion. Will he overturn Roe...