Pro-Abortion Elena Kagan Called "Dangerous" as Fourth Republican Backs Her
by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 29, 2010
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Supreme Court nominee and pro-abortion activist Elena Kagan picked up more support on Wednesday from a pro-abortion Republican senator who is now the fourth GOP lawmaker to endorse her. In response, the leading Republican on the Judiciary Committee called her a "dangerous" nominee.
Olympia Snowe, the pro-abortion Maine Republican, is the fourth GOP lawmaker to endorse Kagan but her decision to do so is somewhat less surprising than the decisions of typically pro-life Sens. Dick Lugar of Indiana and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
All four of the republicans who have endorsed Kagan also voted for pro-abortion Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
Snowe said Kagan had met her standard for a justice, "with the strong intellect, respect for the rule of law, and understanding of the important but limited role of the Supreme Court that I believe is required."
She said endorsements from judicial scholars and some conservatives persuaded her to endorse Kagan, though they likely provided her with political cover to do so.
Responding to Snowe’s endorsement, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, warned senators that voting for Kagan would put a political activist on the high court.
"Be careful about it, because I’m afraid that we have a dangerous, progressive, political-type nominee," he said.
"I don’t think the American people are going to hold harmless those who vote to impose a legal progressive, activist legislator from the bench upon them," Sessions said.
While most Republicans will likely vote against Kagan, it doesn’t appear they will be able to gather enough votes to support a filibuster, so a straight-up without the need for cloture to close off debate appears likely when the full Senate takes up the nomination.
During the committee hearings, pro-life groups say Kagan was not forthright when she downplayed the extent to which she lobbied two medical organizations to change their opinion on when partial-birth abortions are medically necessary.
Kagan’s lobbying resulted in the Supreme Court, in a case striking down state partial-birth abortion bans, eventually relying on the opinion of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that, after Kagan’s prodding, changed its opinion to say some abortions may be medically indicated.
Yet, during the confirmation hearings, Kagan dismissed questions about memos she wrote during the Clinton administration, saying "My only dealings with ACOG were about talking with them about how to ensure that their statement expressed their views."
A coalition of pro-life groups has issued a letter to senators asking for a thorough investigation of Kagan and calling for a probe into her comments about partial-birth abortion.
A nominee to the highest court in the land must meet our nations absolute highest standards of integrity and impartiality, said Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life Action and the main sponsor of the letter.
With serious outstanding questions clouding Ms. Kagans nomination, we are leading a united effort to ask that the Senate investigate discrepancies between her Senate testimony and the written record on partial-birth abortion before proceeding to a floor vote," she told LifeNews.com today.
Kagan claimed in her hearing "there was no way in which I would have or could have intervened with ACOG …. to get it to change its medical views on the question." Instead, she claimed she was trying to get ACOG to issue a statement that "accurately reflected the views" the organization had reportedly already expressed.
But the coalition letter says that conflicts with the account Kagan provided Clinton officials in a letter about her June 1996 meeting with ACOG.
Kagan wrote that the meeting was "something of a revelation" because ACOG officials informed her that, in the "vast majority of cases, selection of the partial-birth abortion procedure is not necessary to avert serious adverse consequences to a woman’s health."
By December, Kagan wrote a memo saying that if ACOG didn’t change its position it would be a "disaster" for Clinton, who went on to veto the partial-birth abortion ban claiming it was needed to protect women’s health.
She drafted a statement ACOG eventually adopted saying partial-birth abortions "may be the best or most appropriate in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman." That was the statement the Supreme Court eventually relied on to overturn state bans on the abortion procedure.
Kagan also sought to influence the American Medical Association and get the AMA to revise its opinion that partial-birth abortions provide no medical benefit for women.
Earlier this month, AUL released a 54-page report examining Kagans role in manipulating the medical statements of the two groups.
Later, former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop issued an open letter to the Senate calling for Kagans nomination to be rejected and pointing to the AUL Action report as a resource on this critical issue.
Pro-life groups have described Elena Kagan as the stereotypical judicial activist and abortion advocate.
She clerked for pro-abortion Justice Thurgood Marshall, whom she lauded, and her writings dating back to her college days are filled with accolades for judges who took the law into their hands and twisted it for a desired outcome rather than relying on the people through their elected officials.
Kagan helped Bill Clinton defend his veto of a partial-birth abortion ban — the gruesome abortion procedure when a baby is birthed halfway and then jabbed in the head with medical scissors, killing him or her. She helped Clinton find political cover for his decision to keep those abortions legal.
Kagan went as far as advocating that the Clinton administration not only ignore but manipulate the opinion of a national medical group that said there was never any medical justification for killing unborn children halfway out of the birth canal.
Kagan has also lauded human cloning and assisted suicide and we can expect those gruesome practices to expand if she becomes the next Supreme Court justice.
ACTION: Contact your senators here and urge a no vote on Kagan’s nomination and tell them to filibuster her.
Related web sites:
Petition Against Kagan – https://www.iopposekagan.com
Facebook: Stop Kagan
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