Democratic Senators Confirm Supreme Court Pick Elena Kagan is Pro-Abortion
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 12, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Democrats in the Senate who are supporting President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan are confirming she is pro-abortion. With no judicial record, groups on both sides of the abortion debate are looking to other information to ascertain how she might rule on abortion cases.
With pro-life groups noting Kagan has a lengthy private record supporting abortion, and pro-abortion groups giving her tentative support, some senators have come out saying she is an abortion advocate.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat seen as the leader of pro-abortion forces in the upper chamber, told Politico Kagan presents no worries for abortion activists.
“I have no reason to think anything else except that she would be a very strong supporter of privacy rights because everyone she worked for held that view," Boxer said using a famous code phrase for promoting abortion.
Boxer also downplayed the false media portrayal of a memo Kagan authored urging support for a fraudulent bill that didn’t ban abortions but was a distraction used as political cover for opponents of the partial-birth abortion ban.
“That was definitely something that everybody had supported at that time," she said of the pro-abortion Daschle bill the memo supported.
Sen. Ted Kaufman, a pro-abortion Delaware Democrat, agreed, adding, “She’s a Democrat’s Democrat."
And Sen. Ben Cardin also chimed in for the political news site. Asked if he is confident Kagan will uphold Roe, he said, “The answer is her background and her record gives me confidence that she’d follow legal precedent. … I’m confident that she’d follow legal precedent.”
Politico indicated the pair were comfortable given her working for pro-abortion politicians like Obama and ex-President Bill Clinton and for pro-abortion judges.
Kagan was a law clerk for Judge Abner Mikva of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and for pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Kagan, a former Harvard Law dean, is an ardent abortion advocate who, at 50, would leave a pro-abortion legacy for Obama on the Supreme Court for decades to come.
"Elena Kagan has strong ties to abortion-advocacy organizations and expressed admiration for activist judges who have worked to advance social policy rather than to impartially interpret the law," Charmaine Yoest, the president of Americans United for Life, told LifeNews.com.
She said her group would "oppose President Obama’s attempt to reshape the Court as an activist, pro-abortion institution through which unelected judges will work to impose an out-of-the-mainstream social agenda upon the American people."
Yoest called Kagan "an ardent abortion supporter" who fulfills Obama’s pledge to nominate a justice who strongly supports abortion.
Kagan has publicly and repeatedly criticized federal regulations that prohibited recipients of Title X family planning funds, taxpayer dollars, from counseling women to get abortions — arguing they amounted to the subsidization of "anti-abortion" speech.
LifeNews.com spoke with Wendy Wright, the president of Concerned Women for America, before the nomination.
Kagan was credited by the ACLU with “shaping Clinton’s policy on hate crimes," Wright noted.
"The Clinton Administration treated pro-life activists like violent criminals, creating a task force in the Department of Justice and a grand jury to investigate peaceful pro-lifers. This raises serious concerns that she shares the hostile view that religious beliefs are a form of ‘hate,’" she said.
Kagan has also come under criticism from Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the pro-life women’s group Susan B. Anthony List.
She told LifeNews.com previously, "In the past Kagan has been a strong supporter of the pro-abortion agenda. 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."
Related web sites:
Petition Against Kagan – https://www.iopposekagan.com
Facebook: Stop Kagan
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