Advocates Eager To Learn More About Supreme Court Nominee Sotomayor's Abortion-Rights Views

Main Category: Abortion
Also Included In: Litigation / Medical Malpractice
Article Date: 29 May 2009 - 2:00 PDT

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Abortion-rights groups on Wednesday offered their support for Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor but said that they were eager to learn more about her views on abortion rights, an issue on which she has made few major rulings in her time as a judge, the New York Times reports. According to the Times, groups on both sides of the abortion-rights debate tend to believe that Sotomayor would uphold Roe v. Wade because she was nominated by President Obama, who supports abortion rights. However, when asked on Tuesday if Obama questioned Sotomayor about her views on abortion rights before the nomination, White House spokesperson Robert Gibbs said that the president "did not ask that specifically." In addition, none of her rulings has directly dealt with the underlying issues of constitutional privacy that are the foundation for the Roe decision, according to the Times. The abortion-related cases Sotomayor has handled in the past have "turned on other legal issues," rather than privacy, and they have resulted in rulings in favor of abortion-right opponents, the Times reports. For example, in 2002, she wrote an opinion upholding the Bush administration's "global gag rule" policy banning federal funding of international groups that offer abortion information or services. "The Supreme Court has made clear that the government is free to favor the antiabortion position over the pro-choice position and can do so with public funds," Sotomayor wrote in the opinion. In 2004, she said that antiabortion-rights protesters were permitted to sue police who they claimed used excessive force in stopping a demonstration at a clinic. Sotomayor also has ruled on several immigration cases related to people fighting deportation orders to China over its family planning policies, the Times reports.

Because of the limited information on Sotomayor's abortion-rights views, advocates have stressed that senators ask questions about her views during her confirmation hearing. NARAL Pro-Choice America President Nancy Keenan in a letter to supporters urged them to press senators to ask Sotomayor about privacy rights. Keenan wrote, "Discussion about [Roe] will -- and must -- be part of this nomination process. As you know, choice hangs in the balance on the Supreme Court as the last two major choice-related cases were decided by a 5-to-4 margin" (Savage, New York Times, 5/28). Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said that she would be surprised if an Obama nominee did not support abortion rights but added that "other presidents have been surprised before" when their nominees' views did not align with their assumptions. Northup said that "no one has been able to give us an assurance" of Sotomayor's views on abortion rights, adding that she would be "very concerned if the question is not asked and answered during the Senate hearings." Feminist Majority Foundation President Eleanor Smeal said, "What we know about [Sotomayor] we like, but I don't know that answer on abortion rights" (Savage/Nicholas, Los Angeles Times, 5/28).

The New York Times reports that more about Sotomayor's views on abortion rights could come to light if a past writing on the subject surfaces, as was the case during Justice Samuel Alito's confirmation process. Steven Waldman, editor in chief of beliefnet.com, said, "Everyone is just assuming that because Obama appointed her, she must be a die-hard pro-choice activist, but it's really quite amazing how little we know about her views on abortion" (Savage, New York Times, 5/28). Thomas Goldstein, a leading appellate attorney and founder of scotusblog.com, said that the "fact that she hasn't gone off on these sorts of questions" on contentious topics like abortion rights and gay marriage, "I think shows that honestly she's not a dyed in the wool liberal." He added that there are issues on which Sotomayor could prove to be more conservative than retiring Justice David Souter (Lerer, Politico, 5/27).

According to the Washington Post, many antiabortion-rights supporters are criticizing Sotomayor as a "judicial activist." Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, said that Sotomayor is a "radical pick" and that there is "no doubt that [her] philosophy is that she is not only a practitioner of activism, but a defender of it" (Barnes, Washington Post, 5/28). Tony Perkins of the conservative Family Research Council said opposition strategies are "still kind of in the discovery process," adding, "How aggressive the effort is depends on whether more comes to light."

Meanwhile, a Gallup Organization poll released Wednesday showed that 47% of 1,015 adults polled rate Sotomayor's nomination as "good or excellent," while 13% of them rated it as "poor" (Wolfe, USA Today, 5/28).

White House Touts Sotomayor's Credentials

The White House on Wednesday began to move forward on promoting Sotomayor's confirmation to the Senate and the public, the New York Times reports. By the end of the day on Wednesday, Sotomayor had spoken with key members of both political parties, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.); Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.); Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.); and the committee's ranking member, Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.). The White House also held a conference call with legal experts to devise a strategy for the judge's confirmation and to address the accusations that she is a judicial activist, the Times reports (Stolberg, New York Times, 5/28). Sessions said that while he does not foresee the use of filibuster to block the confirmation, he expects Republicans to rigorously question Sotomayor on whether she would let her personal views and experiences influence her legal opinions. Sessions said members of the Senate "have an absolute constitutional duty to make sure that any nominee ... will be faithful to the law and not allow their personal views to influence decision-making" (AP/Arizona Daily Star, 5/28).

According to the Wall Street Journal, conservatives are focusing their criticisms on a speech Sotomayor delivered at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law, where she said that she "would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." White House officials said that the comment has been taken out of context and that they did not think it would hinder her confirmation (Weisman/Bendavid, Wall Street Journal, 5/28). The Los Angeles Times reports that Senate Republicans are "taking a deliberate wait-and-see approach" while they look into Sotomayor's past statements and writings (Hook, Los Angeles Times, 5/28).

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