President Donald Trump said he "probably won't" ask potential Supreme Court nominees about whether they would overturn Roe v. Wade.
"They were all saying, 'Don't do that...you shouldn't do that,'" he said during an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News.
The president's words come amid concern from abortion rights supporters that he will nominate a conservative judge who would vote to overturn the landmark case that legalized the procedure nationwide.
Trump will probably not need to ask potential nominees about their views on Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion. Most, if not all, of the potential nominees on his previously released list of candidates were vetted by the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group whose leadership disagrees with the Roe decision.
Trump's second Supreme Court pick will replace Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Ronald Reagan appointee who has served as a swing vote on the court. Kennedy announced his retirement last week.
Trump said he plans to interview six or seven people from his candidate list and will make an announcement of his pick on July 9.
"I'm going to pick someone who is outstanding," he said.
But the eventual nominee already faces a hurdle: Republicans hold a slim 51-49 majority in the Senate, and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is out as he battles brain cancer. That means the president needs to cater to senators on both sides of the aisle if he hopes to get a majority to vote in favor of his pick.
The president told Fox News that he believes his nominee will get some support from Democrats.
Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, an abortion rights supporter, is considered one of the key votes on a nominee. She said she wouldn't vote for someone who would overturn Roe v. Wade.
"A candidate who would overturn Roe would not be acceptable," she said Sunday on ABC's This Week.
Collins, who has previously bucked party lines on other key issues such as health care, said she plans to have an in-depth conversation with the nominee. She emphasized that there were certain people on Trump's candidate list that she wouldn't vote for, though she didn't specify who those people were.
She said she believed it would be inappropriate to ask a nominee how they would vote on a future case.
But she emphasized that they had to talk about precedent. In her view, Roe v. Wade is settled law, and she wanted someone on the court who would respect precedent.
"What I want to see is a nominee who, regardless of his or her personal views on the very difficult and contentious life issue, is going to respect precedent, regardless," she said.
"A number of judges (have told me) that good judges are always unhappy with some of their decisions but they make the right call regardless of their personal views. And that’s what I want to see in this nominee."
Collins said she and fellow Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska have already spoken to the president about his pending decision.
"I got the feeling that he was still deliberating and had not yet reached a decision and that this was genuine outreach on his part," she said.
Collins noted that she was in favor of moving forward with a nominee in the next couple months, so a new justice could be in place by the time the Supreme Court's next term begins in October.
