Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, in a letter to congressional Democrats who had demanded that he recuse himself from several cases related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, refused to do so. He said that his wife, Martha-Ann Alito, was solely responsible for flags seen flying outside two of their homes that appeared to support claims that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Donald Trump.

According to The New York Times, Justice Alito commented in his letter: “My wife is an independently minded private citizen. She makes her own decisions, and I honor her right to do so.”

It is ironic that Justice Alito, who greatly honors his “independently minded” wife’s decisions, refused, with his majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, to accord all the women of the United States the same deference in making the most private, intimate and significant of our decisions: those about our reproductive lives.

Ellen D. Murphy
Portland