Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett defended her vote to overturn national abortion rights during a recent speech in Texas, where the Trump appointee said there is no history or tradition for abortion in the U.S.

Justice Barrett said abortion didn’t pass a test of being a key right founded in the Constitution and “firmly rooted in the history and traditions of the American people.”

Recalling the time after Roe v. Wade was issued in 1973, Justice Barrett said Americans never really had the support for, nor treated it as a right like others rooted in the Constitution.

“You would have to conclude, to say, that it [abortion] had the same supermajority buy-in as say the right to free speech — that it was supported by a supermajority,” she said during a speech Thursday night, according to The Houston Chronicle. “And I think when you look at the history and traditions of the people, the way the law had developed over various states over time, it had not become that kind of settled issue.

“The court should not be telling the American people what rights they should agree to protect, but what rights they have agreed to protect,” she said.

Justice Barrett spoke to a crowd of about 900 people at the LBJ Presidential Library on the University of Texas campus.

She noted that the 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization where the 6-3 Republican-appointed majority on the court overturned Roe v. Wade, which had given women a national right to abortion.

The 2022 decision in Dobbs sent abortion back to the states to regulate. Since then, about a dozen red states have moved to ban the procedure.

“Dobbs laid out the evidence to demonstrate that Roe was incorrect to say that a right to terminate a pregnancy had been deeply rooted in the history and tradition of the American people,” Justice Barrett said.

She was giving the speech to promote her book out earlier this month, “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution.”

Justice Barrett was appointed by President Trump during his first term and confirmed to the court in 2020, replacing the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

• Alex Swoyer can be reached at aswoyer@washingtontimes.com.