Harriet Miers Gave Money to Texas Pro-Life Group Fighting Abortion
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
October 4, 2005
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers once gave money to a pro-life Texas organization fighting against abortion in the state legislature. According to records at the Texans for Life Coalition, Miers gave a $150 donation to the group in 1989.
Kyleen Wright, president of the pro-life group, known then as Texans United for Life and base in Dallas, told the Associated Press, "One would have to assume she is at least moderately pro-life, but how far that commitment goes, I really don’t know."
Wright said the donation earned Mires, a former Dallas city councilwoman, a status of "bronze patron" in the program for the groups annual dinner that year. However, she doesn’t know if Miers attended the event or if she made donations prior to 1989.
"There was about 31 other bronze patrons, almost all of them officeholders or candidates. As best I could tell checking my records, that was the only donation (from Miers)," she said. "My computer records don’t go back to the 1980s. She’s obviously not intimately acquainted with anyone on my staff."
Miers was elected to the Dallas city council in 1989 and served for three years. She did not run for re-election.
Sarah Wheat, executive director of NARAL’s Texas affiliate, told AP the donation raises concerns for her.
"Before the U.S. Senate affirms someone to a lifetime appointment, we need to know whether she has strong personal views about the right to privacy and reproductive health care decisions," she said.
President Bush named Miers to replace outgoing pro-abortion Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and groups on both sides of the abortion debate have been scrambling to find out more about her position on abortion and other key pro-life issues.
Thus far, the only major public involvement Miers has had in the abortion debate was when she led the Texas Bar Association in the early 1990s. In 1993, she worked with pro-life attorneys to stop the American Bar Association from taking a pro-abortion position without polling its members nationwide.
She questioned whether the ABA should "be trying to speak for the entire legal community" on an issue that she said "has brought on tremendous divisiveness."
