The head of Planned Parenthood wants the Supreme Court to expand and add new justices, in the wake of multiple ethical issues that have popped up around certain conservative justices.
While appearing on the “Inside with Jen Psaki” program on MSNBC recently, the pro-choice non-profit organization’s president and CEO, Alexis McGill Johnson, said that she’s calling for these changes to the high court due to the attacks “on our democratic rights and our democratic freedoms.”
She commented on the ruling that a federal judge in Texas made in the last few months that outlawed a popular medication for abortion when she said:
“The reality is, the court now has been fully captured in so many areas. The fact that you have, again, this lone Texas judge that can now bring cases, you can form shop there, bring cases to the Fifth Circuit, which is also conservative and up to the Supreme Court now, which has a conservative supermajority.”
Johnson said that the Supreme Court is way overdue to expand the number of justices on the bench, while also implementing term limits for all the justices – who now serve for life. She said that there’s also a need for ethical reforms to be implemented and that there are issues that surround “people with lifetime appointments, that are very much out of step with where the majority of people are on a variety of issues.”
She continued:
“It would be one thing to call for … a justice to step down for whatever reason, but the reality is that the way in which the system has been captured requires us to engage in structural reform in a different way.”
Just a few weeks ago, a coalition of 30 different advocacy organizations said that structural reform needs to happen at the Supreme Court. One of those reforms that they were pushing for was expanding the number of justices on the high court.
The campaign that this coalition is forming is called “Just Majority,” which officials said would advocate for a “fair and ethical” high court.
In a press release, the coalition said:
“The project will spotlight the crisis of legitimacy faced by the court, highlighting the justices’ unethical behavior and partisan rulings, and make the case for structural reforms such as court expansion.”
The campaign has plans to launch a bus tour that will have more than 20 stops around the U.S. Events will be held that will advocate for people to fight back against the attacks on “reproductive rights, gun violence prevention measures, and racial justice and civil rights.”
This campaign, and the push by Johnson, for an expanded Supreme Court comes when a lot of focus has been on conservative justice Clarence Thomas accepting multiple vacations and trips from a billionaire donor to the Republican Party.
Thomas did not disclose any of those gifts that were given to him, saying that he didn’t need to since they were gifts from a friend.
