Hillary in The White House Wouldn't Have Been Enough To Protect Roe v. Wade

One of the big talking points which emerged from last night's bombshell leak that Roe v. Wade is being overturned is that none of this would be happening had Hillary Clinton been elected President in 2016.

Consider this tweet from Jon Pavlovitz:

If Hillary Clinton had been president in 2016, women would still have autonomy over their own bodies.

Not necessarily.

For starters, even if Hillary had been elected in 2016 she would come to office with a vacancy on the Supreme Court and a Senate led by Mitch McConnell. If McConnell could get away with not having a vote on Merrick Garland during President Obama's last year in office then why wouldn't he have picked up right where he left off?

Now perhaps McConnell could have run the risk of losing the GOP majority in the 2018 mid-terms having left a vacancy on the Supreme Court for nearly three years after the death of Antonin Scalia. But I'm sure it was a risk he would have been entirely prepared to take given the risks he was willing to take with Brett Kavanaugh.

Of course, had Hillary been President and McConnell kept the Supreme Court seat vacant does Anthony Kennedy retire in the first place?

Let's assume that nature would have run its course and Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies in September 2020 under a Clinton presidency. Again, it is all a question of whether Republicans control the Senate. 

So it is entirely possible that Hillary could have appointed two, perhaps three Supreme Court justices and none of them would have been confirmed.

Then there is also the question if Hillary would have been a one term President had she been in the White House during the COVID pandemic.

I grant you the aforementioned is hypothetical. 

What is not hypothetical is that Kentaji Brown Jackson will succeed Stephen Breyer on the Court this fall. While it is true President Biden appointed her she would not have been confirmed had Georgia voters (myself included at the time) not elected both Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock to the Senate in January 2021.

Simply put, it takes more having a Democrat in the White House to protect a woman's right to choose be it Obama, Hillary or Biden. It takes having Democrats in control of Congress, especially the Senate where it concerns judicial appointments. In light of yesterday's stunning developments, Democrats now have new lease on life.