Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- His nomination has gone under the radar to this point, but President Barack Obama's nominee for assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, Ron Weich, is beginning to draw criticism. One pro-life writer points out that Weich repeatedly opposed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act.

Obama named Weich to lead the Justice Department's Office of Legislative Affairs, an agency that "has responsibility for the development and implementation of strategies to advance the Department's legislative initiatives and other interests relating to Congress."

In that role, Weich would also participate in the Senate confirmation process for federal judges and U.S. attorneys, including Supreme Court justices.

Weich has been chief counsel to pro-abortion Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has upset pro-life advocates with his abandonment of his formerly-held pro-life views.

But, Weich has, himself, upset pro-life advocates and caused concern about his role as an Obama advisor on federal judicial picks.

During the Congressional debate on the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, the federal bill that allows prosecutors to charge criminals with two crimes when they both attack and killer or injure a pregnant mother and the unborn child, Weich testified in opposition.

Abortion advocates put forward the argument that pregnant women and unborn children were not worth protecting and providing additional justice for because doing so would allow the public to see babies before birth as worthy of legal protection and that could undermine their arguments to keep abortion legal.

Weich took the same route -- and a pot shot at pro-life advocates -- when he spoke against the protective criminal justice bill.

“[T]he bill is just one more step in the anti-abortion movement's methodical strategy to humanize fetuses, marginalize women, demonize abortion providers and make the image of abortion less palatable to the American people," he said.

That worries Ramesh Ponnuru, an editor with National Review.

Ponnuru is concerned that Weich, if involved in the Obama administration, would work against the first case involving the federal law that has begun making its way through the court system.

"The first prosecution brought under the federal law is now winding its way through the courts. Will Eric Holder's Justice Department defend its constitutionality against challenge?" he asks.

Ponnuru says even abortion advocates in Congress didn't agree with Weich's arguments against the pro-woman bill.

"While the leading argument against the bill was that it would undermine Roe v. Wade, many pro-choice congressman voted for the act—and some prominent academic supporters of Roe dismissed the argument that the bill would undermine it," he says.

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