Hearings on Pro-Abortion Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan Start June 28

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 19, 2010   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Hearings on Pro-Abortion Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan Start June 28

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
May 19
, 2010

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The Senate Judiciary Committee will start hearings on pro-abortion Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan on June 28. Kagan is the second pro-abortion judicial activist President Barack Obama has selected for the nation’s highest court following Sonia Sotomayor.

If confirmed, she would replace retiring pro-abortion Justice John Paul Stevens and maintain the 5-4 pro-abortion majority that has kept Roe v. Wade and its legacy of 52 million abortions in place.

Today, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a pro-abortion Vermont Democrat, announced his panel will hold hearings in late June and wrap up with a vote before the July 4 recess.

Republican Jeff Sessions, a pro-life Alabama senator who is the top GOP lawmaker on the panel, complained that Republicans wanted more time to sift through a laundry list of new memos and papers on Kagan — including one showing her advising ex-President Bill Clinton how to avoid political fallout from vetoing a partial-birth abortion ban.

"Sometimes we just disagree about how things ought to be done. I know that we had asked that we be able to have the hearing after the recess, just to give our colleagues more time to study the record and maybe prepare their remarks," Session said, according to Fox News.

He added, "We’ll try to do our best to conduct an effective hearing, even if I would have preferred a little more time."

In a statement Sessions released responding to the timetable Leahy set up, he predicted Republicans may exercise their right to delay hearings and a committee vote by one week.

He said that Americans are "concerned that Constitutional principles are being eroded, that we’re not recognizing the fact that our government is a limited government. We can have a fine nominee in many ways, but if they’re not committed to the limited role of a federal judge, if they’re not aware that they must serve…under the Constitution, not above it, then they’re not qualified to serve on the bench."

Senate Republicans say they likely will not filibuster the nomination of pro-abortion Solicitor General Elena Kagan to replace retiring pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. However, they promise tough hearings and questions in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The timetable for the nomination process to move through the Senate should resemble the one used to confirm pro-abortion Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. That had committee hearings and votes as well as a full Senate vote conclude by August, in time for the nominee to join the high court before its October session.

Kagan has a very clear pro-abortion record heading into that process, including recent information showing she donated to pro-abortion groups with ties to the Emily’s List organization that endorses pro-abortion candidates with the most extreme position favoring taxpayer funded abortions.

Obama’s nominee also wrote a memo during the Clinton adminsitration providing him political cover for his veto of a bill banning partial-birth abortions. She attacked pro-life advocates in a 1980 essay and has a history of working for pro-abortion judges and politicians.

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.

She has spent most of her career in academia and government — in part as a legal counsel in the administration of pro-abortion President Bill Clinton –and prior to becoming the attorney for the Obama administration before the Supreme Court. Kagan was Associate Counsel to President Bill Clinton and Deputy Assistant to him for domestic policy — which, under Clinton, advocated abortion.

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."

Kagan’s nomination confirmed the suspicion of many political observers that Obama decided to go with a radical left-wing nominee while Democrats control the Senate with a huge advantage that is expected to deteriorate after the November elections.

Related web sites:
Americans United for Life – https://www.AUL.org
Petition Against Kagan – https://www.iopposekagan.com
Facebook: Stop Kagan

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