Few GOP candidates can afford to alienate pro-life voters, since that base of support is needed to win elections. If the Bushes had campaigned on a “pro-choice” position, neither would have been elected. The same holds for most of the Republicans in the Senate, and a majority of GOP Representatives in the House. So political news about abortion is good for the party of Lincoln, since it can keep its pro-life base and a core issue under debate for decades to come.
It would be nice to believe that the Republicans who control both houses of Congress and the White House really plan to discard Roe v. Wade. The impact of that decision on American society is echoed in everything from the demise of Social Security to a labor shortage that is being filled by illegal immigrants (doing jobs that we are told no Americans want). Dark changes plainly rooted in abortion have shifted how Americans relate to each other, and that cannot be ignored. There are important factors to consider if the GOP is accepted as pro-life.
Republicans have appointed seven out of the nine Justices on the United States Supreme Court. In 2000, when the court considered Nebraska’s ban on partial birth abortion, three of the GOP-appointed judges joined two Democrats in overturning that state’s law. There is no reason to believe the Supreme Court will do otherwise if it considers 2003’s newest proposed federal ban on killing a baby and making his or her tiny body’s last experience in life a pair of scissors jammed in the back of the neck.
Congress may adopt a partial birth ban, and President Bush might sign it. Voters could well reward them for it. But the same judges on the Supreme Court may likely overturn a new ban on partial-birth abortion, just as they did in 2000. For three GOP-appointed judges, they were simply keeping a long-held tradition.
Forgotten by most of America’s pro-life voters, who constitute the majority, Republican Richard Nixon’s appointee to the Supreme Court wrote the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade. Harry Blackmun got the innocent blood of unborn millions on his hands in 1973. And Democrat John F. Kennedy’s appointee, Byron White, wrote the dissenting opinion that warned America about the perils of raw judicial tyranny. Roe overturned state laws adopted against abortion by those elected to represent the American people.
Still, many voters view the GOP as a friend of the unborn. And new debates over a nominee to the federal bench could reveal the circuit that will amplify that position.
Miguel Estrada has been nominated by the President to serve on the Federal Court of Appeals for Washington, DC. That court is only inferior to the Supreme Court of the United States, and many of the justices who serve on it are later appointed to America’s highest bench. Christians all over America are being urged by leaders to rally behind Miguel Estrada against Democratic opposition to his confirmation in the Senate.
They are telling us that President Bush’s nominee is pro-life, that he believes abortion is horrible, and that we have nothing to worry about except Democrats. But when asked by Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) whether he sees Roe v. Wade as settled law, Estrada answered, “I believe so.”
Miguel Estrada didn’t rebut Senator Feinstein by telling her the Roe v. Wade case was decided on a ruse. He didn’t remind Senators that the claimant in Roe has since admitted the court was misled when her lawyers asserted that she had been pregnant because of rape, something that Norma McCorvey has since refuted. Estrada didn’t respond by saying that abortion has killed one out of every three Americans between the ages of a moment and thirty years.
During a September 26, 2002 hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee in which Miguel Estrada gave testimony, Senator Feinstein asked him if he agreed with her that the Constitution protects abortion as a “right to privacy”. Estrada answered, “The Supreme Court has so held and I have no view of any nature whatsoever, whether it be legal, philosophical, moral, or any other type of view that would keep me from applying that case law faithfully.”
When queried further by the California Democrat about Roe v. Wade, Miguel Estrada said, “It is the law as it was subsequently refined by the Casey case, and I will follow it.” There was no outrage expressed in pro-life America when the would-be Federal Judge Estrada agreed with Senator Diane Feinstein that Roe v. Wade is “settled law”. As he coldly said, “I believe so.”
Those saying he is a jurist who keeps his views on abortion under the radar augment Miguel Estrada’s stellar personal record. He is alleged to have told associates of the National Organization of Women (NOW) that he believes abortion is murder. Back channels in Washington say that Estrada’s point was issued at a victory luncheon when NOW was celebrating one of the Supreme Court’s decisions in 1994.
President Bush’s nominee, who is being lauded as the standard bearer for judicial appointments facing opposition by the abortion party, had filed a “friend of the court” brief on behalf of NOW against Joe Scheidler in the Supreme Court. Scheidler is a leader of abortion clinic protests, and he only recently won his case after seventeen years of litigation that included Estrada’s successful brief against him. The court ruled for NOW in 1994, and it agreed with Estrada’s assertion that abortion clinic protesters could legally be considered “racketeers”, even if they didn’t have a financial motive.
One might wonder how conservative activists who recount Estrada’s denouncement of abortion at the NOW luncheon could have heard of it, or why a future Bush nominee would be lunching with NOW in the first place, if these stories are true. But they certainly support the not-so-soft whisper campaign in Washington claiming Miguel Estrada is covertly pro-life.
Estrada was working under Janet Reno in the Clinton administration’s Justice Department at the time he filed as “amicus curiae” on behalf of NOW in the Supreme Court. The nominee of a self-described pro-life
President had worked in the Clinton administration, and he had notably crafted a legal brief that undermined the defense of pro-life protesters facing an onslaught of litigation by feminists.
The episode in committee along with the NOW case might make us think support for this nominee would be shallow among those who believe abortion is murder. But the majority of pro-life American voters have allowed themselves to slide deeply into a pit of deception. Put the whisper campaigns and blind-faith loyalty to a Republican nominee aside. Consider the whole picture. It is clearer than supporters of Estrada will admit.
We have, as the President’s man for a fight with Democrats in the newly re-occupied Republican controlled Senate, a government lawyer who worked under Janet Reno. He filed a legal brief for NOW claiming laws designed for prosecution of the Mafia could be used to go after abortion clinic protesters. And he has told the United States Senate that he believes Roe v. Wade is “settled law”.
Today Miguel Estrada is viewed in Republican circles as a leader in the battle over President Bush’s judicial nominations. But the GOP clearly has some questions to answer. Party leaders might respond predictably, if only they were being asked instead of applauded.
An explanation did come from Ken Starr, the faithful Republican who failed to convince a GOP-controlled Senate to remove the impeached President, William Jefferson Clinton, even though it was later proven that Clinton misled a court. Starr was a guest on Sam Donaldson’s “Live in America” talk-radio program when the former judge and Solicitor General revealed a latest and most clever misconception in the fight for the unborn.
Donaldson asked Starr about abortion and Roe v. Wade. Ken Starr told the audience that he is “pro-life” and that he believed Roe v. Wade had been wrongly decided. He then went on to describe how Roe v. Wade was “settled law” and that nothing short of a Constitutional Amendment could reverse it. The Republican strategy of being pro-life without opposing abortion had been conceived, and untold millions of unborn babies could be aborted as a result.
Miguel Estrada emphatically echoes this latest compromise. Rumors hold that if you ask him, he’ll tell you he believes abortion is murder. But Estrada could certainly go on about how Roe v. Wade has been decided, as he acknowledged to the Senate. Politicians all over America can adopt this scheme saying they are pro-life, and that abortion-on-demand must remain lawful practice throughout the country.
It is a greasy office-seeker’s dream.
Voters can rant on and on about millions of unborn babies killed in the abortion mills every year. They can yell about the impact on a country that has destroyed one-third of its youngest and most vibrant citizens. Americans can suffer their losses in mortal ruin of abortion without doing anything to stop it. Roe v. Wade is “established law”, and thousands of silent screams will go unheard each day in abortion clinics because the matter has been settled, according to the latest word, just as Dred Scott v. Stanford “settled” questions about slavery 146 years ago.
President Bush, Miguel Estrada, and Ken Starr all describe themselves as “pro-life” like most Republicans, surely like the party’s grassroots voters. Yet the lawyers among them agree that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land, that abortion on demand is rightly legal. They have told us there is nothing to be done about it. And they may be correct, unless America reverses this political deception.