‘They set a torch to it’: Warren says court lost legitimacy with Roe reversal

Leading Democrats on Sunday continued calling the supreme court’s legitimacy into question after it took away the nationwide right to abortion last week, and some again lobbied for appointing additional justices to the panel so as to blunt the conservative super-majority that made the controversial ruling possible.

Related: Abortion banned in multiple US states just hours after Roe v Wade overturned

The Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren suggested to ABC’s This Week that expanding the court was an urgent matter because supreme court justice Clarence Thomas indicated in Friday’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that he is open to reconsidering precedents guaranteeing the right to contraception, same-sex marriage and consensual gay sex.

“They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had,” Warren said of the supreme court. “They just took the last of it and set a torch to it.”

Warren joined Georgia gubernatorial candidate and Democratic organizer Stacey Abrams in again lobbying to expand the supreme court in a way that balances the current makeup of six conservatives and three liberals.

Joe Biden has rejected the strategy. But Abrams – who previously served in Georgia’s house of representatives – said the president doesn’t have the final word on the matter, with legislators also having a say.

“There’s nothing sacrosanct about nine members of the United States supreme court,” Abrams said on CNN’s State of the Union.

Warren again discussed abolishing the filibuster, a tactic that both parties use to prevent legislative decisions, a move Biden and centrist Democrats have also rejected.

She also urged Biden to issue orders shielding medication abortions and authorizing the terminations of pregnancies on federal land.

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez argued that drastic measures were justified.

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“I believe that the president and the Democratic party needs to come to terms with is that this is not just a crisis of Roe – this is a crisis of our democracy,” Ocasio-Cortez said.