What was disingenuous? They said it was precedent and entitled to stare decisis, and that's all. That's exactly what the opinion did, it analyzed it based on stare decisis, concluded stare decisis wasn't enough to prevent it from being overturned, and then overturned it. No lies or deceits there.
In fact, the quotes you offered from them are rather similar to a statement Sotomayor (regarded as a liberal justice, and one of the dissenters in Dobbs) made in her confirmation hearing:
"All precedents of the Supreme Court I consider settled law, subject to the deference to doctrine of stare decisis would counsel."
(available at
https://epic.org/wp-content/uploads/privacy/sotomayor/sotomoyor_transcript.pdf)
Also please note the following:
Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor said Thursday that she would follow a historic ruling affirming Americans' right to own guns for self-defense, but pro-gun activists said they still believe she'd work to limit gun rights if confirmed for the high court.
Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado said Sotomayor told him during a private meeting that she considers the 2008 ruling that struck down a Washington, D.C., handgun ban as settled law that would guide her decisions in future cases. In District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held that individuals have a constitutional right to guns.
Source:
Sotomayor's views on guns prompt questions
Less than a year after she was on the court, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, she joined Breyer's opinion which advocated an overturn of Heller. Granted, the attempt to overturn it didn't succeed--this was a dissent--but the attempt was there despite saying "all precedents" are "settled law" and even referring specifically to Heller to Mark Udall. In regards to successful overturning she participated in, there was Alleyne v. United States overturning Harris v. United States and Herrera v. Wyoming overturning Ward v. Race Horse. Her above statement regarding precedents and stare decisis ultimately went no farther than any of the quotes you offered--and yet, there we have it, multiple attempts to overturn past decisions.
Their position in this opinion, which they may or may not have held at the time of their confirmation hearings, was that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided. Holding that position does not necessarily mean someone is "pro-life". It means they think that it was a bad interpretation of the Due Process Clause. As I've noted before (perhaps too many times, but it's such a good point I can't help but bring it up), one of the most famous critiques of Roe v. Wade
was an article by John Hart Ely, a famous constitutional scholar who, in the very article asserts "Were I a legislator I would vote for a statute very much like the one the Court ends up drafting." He agreed with Roe as policy. He nevertheless concluded that Roe "is bad because it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is
not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be."
I can't really respond to this because it's rather vague. didn't look too far into Breyer and Kagan but I'm sure I could easily find them make statements about the importance of precedent and stare decisis and then they happily tried to overturn past decisions as well, much like how I discussed Sotomayor above.
Everyone for the last few decades, liberal or conservative, is ambiguous in their hearings when it comes to their future rulings. I recall that was the case with the recent hearings for Ketanji Brown Jackson. There are two reasons for this:
1) Judges should be going into cases with an open mind. So in something like a confirmation hearing, they actually
shouldn't have definite answers for how they'd rule in cases.
2) More pragmatically, after Robert Bork got "borked" by the Democrats, people realized that the smartest thing to do is to keep their mouth shut on anything controversial during the hearings.
