COLORADO SPRINGS (LifeSiteNews) — United States Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett opened up Friday about her experiences on the nation’s highest court, including sometimes needing to travel to and from home wearing a bulletproof vest due to threats from ideological foes.
The Washington Post reports that Barrett, the last of former President Donald Trump’s three appointees and confirmed in 2020 to replace left-wing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was speaking at the 10th Circuit Bench & Bar Conference. She said overall her family has adjusted “beautifully” to her current role but that she finds its security demands challenging, such as having to regularly travel with U.S. Marshals.
In particular, she recalled an anecdote in which her 13-year-old son came across the discarded bulletproof vest she had worn home and how his initial innocent reaction of “that’s so cool! Can I try it on?” soon gave way to concern as to why his mother had it in the first place.
During her tenure, Barrett has been more moderate than conservative colleagues Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. But the fact that she voted with the conservative majority to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022 was all it took for pro-abortion activists to make her a target.
When a leaked draft indicated the court’s decision on Roe a month ahead of its official release, a pro-abortion group calling itself Ruth Sent Us organized “walk-by protests” at the “homes of the six extremist justices” and published a map containing those homes. The protests, which included chants like “no uterus, no opinion” (despite Barrett being female), violated federal law against “picketing or parading” with the “intent of influencing any judge” in or near “a building or residence occupied or used by such judge.”
The Biden administration refused to condemn the choice of private homes as protest sites, and then-Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went so far as to praise the “righteous anger” of the protesters.
The leak and subsequent ruling were also followed by numerous acts of violence, vandalism, and intimidation against churches and pro-life pregnancy centers and, most alarmingly, California man Nicholas John Roske taking a gun and ammunition to the home of Barrett’s fellow Justice and Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh, with intent to kill.
Yet the pro-abortion Biden administration has been criticized for treating crimes in support of abortion far less aggressively than crimes against it. In April, legal observers questioned why a trial date still hadn’t been set for Roske two years after his indictment (last month a date was finally set for next June), and last month U.S. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) wrote a letter demanding FBI Director explain such disparities and prove that the bureau is actually investigating pro-abortion violence as it claims.