Nomination, Roberts

This choice unnerves me:

If confirmed, Judge Roberts might tilt the balance of the court rightward. Justice O’Connor, who has been on the tribunal for 24 years and was the first woman on the Supreme Court, was widely regarded as a swing justice between the liberal and conservative blocs.

The nominee will now undergo a background investigation. Then his nomination will be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee, whose chairman, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, has said he wants to schedule hearings by late August or September.

If recent history is a guide, the nominee will be questioned extensively about his views on divisive social issues, especially abortion. The abortion-rights organization Naral immediately came out against the nomination. “If Roberts is confirmed to a lifetime appointment, there is little doubt that he will work to overturn Roe v. Wade,” the organization said, referring to the 1973 Supreme Court decision that affirmed a woman’s right to abortion.

“As deputy solicitor general under the first President Bush, he argued to the Supreme Court that ‘Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled,’ ” Naral said in its statement.

Republicans have a 10-to-8 advantage on the Judiciary Committee, and they have 55 seats in the Senate, so chances for confirmation would appear to be good – unless the nominee’s views arouse enough opposition to inspire a Democratic filibuster.

Nor can opposition from conservatives be entirely ruled out. While Judge Roberts is viewed as a conservative, has yet to rule on any major abortion case. Consequently, some conservatives have worried that he could be “another Souter.”

More completely:

In two cases, Roberts took positions hostile to women’s reproductive rights. He was a co-author of the government’s brief in Rust v. Sullivan, the case in which the Supreme Court upheld newly revised Title X regulations that prohibited U.S. family planning programs receiving federal aid from giving any abortion-related counseling or other services. The provision barred such clinics not only from providing abortions, but also from “counseling clients about abortion” or even “referring them to facilities that provide abortions.”

Roberts’ brief argued that the regulation gagging the government-financed programs was necessary to fulfill Congress’ intent not to fund abortions through these programs, despite the fact that several members of Congress, including sponsors of the amendment dealing with abortion, disavowed this position and that the Department of Health and Human Services’ had not previously interpreted the provision in such a rigid and restrictive manner.

Moreover, Roberts argued, even though the case did not implicate Roe v. Wade, that “[w]e continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled… The Court’s conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion… finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution.”

And to get really exciting:

In a second abortion-related case, Roberts co-authored the government’s amicus brief in a private suit brought against Operation Rescue by an abortion clinic it had targeted. The brief argued that Operation Rescue was not engaged in a conspiracy to deprive women of equal protection. Roberts took this position in spite of Operation Rescue’s admission that its goal was to prevent women from obtaining abortions and to shut down the clinic during its protests. Although the government’s brief acknowledged that only women could become pregnant, it argued that conspiring to prevent people from seeking constitutionally-protected abortions did not constitute gender discrimination. It asserted that, at worst, Operation Rescue was discriminating against pregnant people, not women.

Write to your senators and representatives. Tell them no. Do not be invisible.