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Ocasio-Cortez, Warren call for more justices, federal action on abortion: ‘This is a crisis of our democracy.’

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, spoke to abortion-rights activists after the announcement of the Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization ruling overturning Roe v. Wade in front of the US Supreme Court on Friday in Washington, D.C.Anna Moneymaker/Getty

US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, called the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the ruling that gave federal protections for abortion, a “crisis of our democracy” on “Meet The Press” Sunday.

She also questioned if impeachment should be considered for justices if they lied about their stance on Roe during their confirmation hearings.

“The Supreme Court has dramatically overreached its authority,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Senator Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, said the court has a legitimacy issue on ABC News’s “This Week” on Sunday. She said more justices should be added to the Supreme Court and was one of 34 Senate Democrats to send a letter to President Biden on Saturday asking for more “immediate action” on protecting abortion access.

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“This court has lost legitimacy. They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had after their gun decision, after their voting decision, after their union decision. They just took the last of it and set a torch to it with Roe v. Wade,” Warren said.

Senators Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, have said they were led astray by some of the justices’ stances on Roe during the lead-up to their confirmations to the Supreme Court.

Manchin in a press release said Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh testified under oath “that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent.” Both justices were in the majority opinion to overturn the landmark abortion decision.

Collins also said in a statement that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh’s opinion was “inconsistent” with what they said in their testimony and meetings with her.

Ocasio-Cortez targeted those inconsistencies.

“If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath and secure lifetime appointments to the highest court of the land and issue without basis, if you read these opinions, rulings that deeply undermine the human and civil rights of the majority of Americans, we must see that through,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “There must be consequences.”

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She advocated for several changes, including restraining judicial review, expanding the court, and using federal land for abortion clinics.

She also called for a House floor vote to codify several cases mentioned in Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion — he wrote that the court “should reconsider” cases on the right to contraception, same-sex marriage, and same-sex sexual activity.



Lauren Booker can be reached at lauren.booker@globe.com.