Top Potential Obama Supreme Court Picks Pro-Abortion, Likely Will Pick Woman
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 13, 2009
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — President Barack Obama is facing more pressure to appoint a pro-abortion woman judge to the Supreme Court to replace retiring pro-abortion Justice David Souter. Six potential picks mentioned today are mostly women and all are abortion advocates.
They include pro-abortion Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and pro-abortion Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
Obama is facing pressure from the Hispanic community to appoint the Supreme Court’s first Latin American judge and pressure from abrotion advocates for a woman. Obama may satisfy both political pressure groups by potentially appointing New York federal appellate Judge Sonia Sotomayor.
However, Wendy Long of the Judicial Confirmation Network tells WorldNetDaily that Sotomayor is an activist judge, who likely agrees with Roe v. Wade and would prefer that the courts make abortion law.
Sotomayor remarked in 2005 that the courts are the place "where policy is made."
"What she said is exactly the way she judges," Long said. "It’s exactly what the president has talked about. He likes that. He thinks that liberal judges are so smart and so enlightened and have such great instincts about what policy should be that they should be making the decisions about policy for the rest of us."
Appellate judge Diane Wood is another possibility. 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.
Wood could have an advantage if only because she is said to be favorable to economic conservatives and she taught at the University of Chicago at the same time Obama was teaching constitutional law there.
Long also has problems with Wood, and told WND, "She tends to write her own personal views into the law instead of looking at what the law says."
"She has shown a pretty consistent hostility to religious litigants and religious interests whose cause is very clearly protected in the First Amendment of our Constitution," Long added.
"Even the liberal justices on the court, Justice Ginsburg and Justice Breyer agreed that she should have been reversed," Long said about Wood and the RICO case.
Another top woman prospect for Obama is Elena Kagan, whom the Senate recently confirmed to become the Solicitor General, the attorney who represents the government before the Supreme Court.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the pro-life women’s group Susan B. Anthony List, told LifeNews.com her organization urged pro-life advocates to ask their members of the Senate to vote no on Kagan, who has a longstanding pro-abortion position.
"In the past Kagan has been a strong supporter of the pro-abortion agenda," Dannenfelser explains. "She has vigorously opposed the de-funding of taxpayer-funded clinics which promote abortions, despite the fact that a majority of Americans do not want their tax dollars to fund abortion providers."
Some dismiss Kagan’s chances because she was recently confirmed to the position and has not served long enough to be elevated to a Supreme Court justice position.
Meanwhile, Sen. Barbara Boxer has started an Internet campaign to push Obama to appoint a woman and his top potential choices all support abortion.
Boxer, a California Democrat and leading pro-abortion senator, makes it clear in a new letter circulating online that Obama must select a woman for the post.
"Women make up 51% of our nation’s population. And just one out of nine Supreme Court justices is a woman," Boxer says.
"Send an email to the White House now – and urge President Obama to nominate a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court," Boxer adds. "Since Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement from the Supreme Court four years ago, Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been the sole female Justice.
"Now, with Justice Souter’s recent retirement announcement, President Obama has a chance to nominate an intelligent, well-qualified person to the Supreme Court – and I believe that person should be a woman," she says.
Other potential picks include Leah Ward Sears, the chief justice of Georgia’s Supreme Court; Stanford’s Pam Karlan; and Johnnie Rawlinson, an appeals court judge and the first African American woman appointed to that circuit.
Men who have been mentioned as potential nominees include pro-abortion Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Harvard Law professor Cass Sunstein and U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo of Chicago.
Whomever Obama appoints will likely enjoy an easy road to confirmation because the chamber contains 59 Democrats, an expected 60th Democrat if Al Franken of Minnesota joins the chamber soon, and a few pro-abortion Republicans who may side with Democrats.
If Obama names an abortion activist to the high court, pro-life groups will likely be encouraging pro-life senators to filibuster the nomination.
Sign Up for Free Pro-Life News From LifeNews.com
Daily Pro-Life News Report Twice-Weekly Pro-Life
News Report Receive a free daily email report from LifeNews.com with the latest pro-life news stories on abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. Sign up here. Receive a free twice-weekly email report with the latest pro-life news headlines on abortion, euthanasia and stem cell research. Sign up here.
