US supreme court chief justice John Roberts has defended his conservative-leaning bench from attacks over its decision in June to overturn federal abortion rights, as US vice-president Kamala Harris launched a fierce attack on what she called today’s “activist court”.

Roberts, in his first public appearance since the bombshell ruling to overturn the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision, warned against linking contentious decisions with court legitimacy, saying at an event on Friday night: “The court has always decided controversial cases and decisions have always been subject to intense criticism, and that is entirely appropriate.”

But in her first sit-down interview with a TV network since becoming vice-president, Harris told NBC News that she now believes the supreme court is an “activist court” after the institution took away nationwide abortion rights.

“We had an established right for almost half a century, which is the right of women to make decisions about their own body as an extension of…the privacy rights to which all people are entitled,” Harris said during the interview with Chuck Todd for Meet the Press, aired in full on Sunday after being trailed on Friday.

“And this court took that constitutional right away, and we are suffering as a nation because of it,” she added.

Harrissaid: “I believe government should not be telling women what to do with their bodies. I believe government should not be telling women how to plan their families…should not be criminalizing healthcare providers…should not be saying ‘no exception for rape or incest’.”

Before becoming a US Senator and then the first female US vice-president, Harris was attorney general of California and, before that, district attorney of San Francisco.

“As a prosecutor, former prosecutor, who specialized in child sexual assault cases, understanding the violence that occurs against women and children, and then to further subject them to those kind of inhumane conditions – that’s what I believe,” she said.

The vice-president also remarked that she has “great concern about the integrity of the court overall”.

Since the Trump administration achieved three appointments to the nine-member bench, the court has swung sharply to the right with a six-three conservative supermajority. It voted in June to dismantle Roe, returning the power over abortion rights to the states and leaving 58% of US women of reproductive age, or 40 million women, in states hostile to abortion rights.

And Roberts defended the court.

“He added, at the Friday event: “I don’t understand the connection between the opinions people disagree with and the legitimacy of the supreme court,” he said, while being interviewed by two judges from the Denver-based 10th US circuit court of appeals at its conference in Colorado Springs, the Gazette newspaper reported.

“If the court doesn’t retain its legitimate function of interpreting the constitution, I’m not sure who would take up that mantle. You don’t want the political branches telling you what the law is, and you don’t want public opinion to be the guide about what the appropriate decision is,” Roberts said.

Roberts said that fencing around the court building in Washington DC, installed amid fierce protests over abortion rights, has come down. And that when the next supreme court term begins in October, arguments will be open to the public in person again, after the building was shut in the pandemic.