Rudy Giuliani’s Judicial Appointments Criticized on Abortion Stances 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
March 12, 2007
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — As the leading candidate seeking the GOP nomination for president, Rudy Giulaini has tried to convince pro-life voters they can trust him because he will appoint "strict constructionists" to the Supreme Court. But one leading pro-life group says his nominations as New York’s mayor weren’t anything like that.
In his eight years as mayor, Giuliani, who backs abortion, appointed or reappointed 127 municipal judges who preside over family courts, criminal misdemeanor cases and civil claims of less than $25,000.
But Connie Mackey, a Family Research Council vice president, said Giuliani’s appointments "were mostly liberal."
Any pro-lifer who believes they are going to get the kind of judge out of Rudy Giuliani that we see in either [Supreme Court Chief Justice John] Roberts or [Supreme Court Justice Samuel] Alito is probably going to be disappointed," Mackey told the Los Angeles Times over the weekend.
Mackey cited one judge approved by Giuliani as an example.
He appointed Dora Irizarry, who had called herself pro-abortion and had the backing of pro-abortion Democratic Sens. Charles Schumer and Hillary Clinton, to the criminal bench in 1996.
A recent review of judges Giuliani appointed to three of New York state’s lower courts found that Democrats outnumbered Republicans by more than 8 to 1.
However, Kelli Conlin, executive director of NARAL’s New York affiliate, disagreed with the assessment, saying there was no real ideological pattern to them.
"On balance, the great majority of Giuliani appointees were moderates," she told the Times. "I didn’t notice a pattern of conservatives, and I certainly didn’t notice a pattern of appointing strict constructionists."
Other political observers told the Times that the appointments were mostly based on merit and Giuliani’s "law and order" view of criminal courts and that the appointments were not made based on a judge’s views on abortion issues.
How a presidential candidate handles possible Supreme Court appointments is significant in the evaluation of any candidate.
The high court is generally thought to currently favor abortion on a 5-4 margin and the change of one more justice could prompt the reversal of Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that ushered in an era of unlimited abortions.
