Potential Obama Supreme Court Nominee Diane Wood Strongly Pro-Abortion
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
February 10, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — With Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recovering from surgery for pancreatic cancer, speculation is ramped up about who President Barack Obama may choose as a potential replacement. One of the names on the short list political observers have pieced together is pro-abortion Judge Diane Wood.
Wood is a member of the federal 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and she has a long history of taking the pro-abortion side when it comes to pro-life issues.
Wood ruled against bans on partial-birth abortion in cases involving legislation from Wisconsin and Illinois. She joined the federal court in ruling that Wisconsin’s law was unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s first ruling on partial-birth abortions in 2000.
Judge Wood also ruled in favor of abortion advocates by allowing them to misuse the RICO law designed to control mob activities to sue pro-life protesters.
The Supreme Court twice overturned her opinion and, in February 2006, ruled a second time that federal racketeering laws used against mob bosses can’t be used against pro-life advocates who protest abortions.
Wood kept alive the lawsuit against pro-life advocates even though the high court had already issued an 8-0 decision in their favor.
Joseph Scheidler, the defendant in the lawsuit, said after the decision that Wood " claimed an affiliation with Chicago NOW and Planned Parenthood throughout the duration of the" case.
Finally, Wood wrote a dissent in a case concerning an Indiana law requiring counseling and informed consent prior to an abortion. Similar laws in other states have reduced the number of abortions by giving women information about abortion risks and alternatives and have been upheld by the Supreme Court.
Wood would fit the bill of nominating a woman to replace Ginsburg, who is currently the only woman on the court and one of the five members of the pro-abortion majority.
Another woman, pro-abortion Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, said last week she is "not interested in a Supreme Court appointment."
Before Ginsburg’s health issues surfaced, Harold Hongju Koh, the pro-abortion dean of Yale Law School, was seen as one of the most likely Obama picks.
But Piero A. Tozzi, of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, points out that Koh, as a Supreme Court justice, might use a new standard beyond the so-called privacy basis to justify keeping Roe and its ruling that unlimited abortions should be legal throughout pregnancy for any reason.
"A Koh nomination would revive debate over the importation of ‘transnational’ social norms on contentious issues like abortion," Tozzi writes.
Tozzi notes that Koh’s academic writings have redefined sovereignty as “a nation’s capacity to participate in international affairs,” and have blurred any distinctive national identity.
"Koh goes on to say that the way a nation exercises sovereignty responsibly is to accept all United Nations (UN) documents and the UN human rights review process," Tozzi writes.
With the United Nations, aided by a supportive Obama administration, possibly setting out to make abortion an international right and approving documents requiring countries across the globe to honor that right, a Koh appointment would make it that much harder to overturn Roe.
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