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Meet John Roberts July 20, 2005 American Spectator
This column was written by Adele M. Stan.It's hard to know what's more disturbing about President George W. Bush's nomination of Judge John Roberts for a seat on the Supreme Court: the man's sparse paper trail or the loose leaves he's scattered along the way. Either way, the nomination should give pause, not just to women or African Americans but to all Americans who hold dear the Bill of Rights.
Let's begin with Roberts' women problem. As deputy solicitor general for George Bush Senior, Roberts presented two troubling briefs on matters having to do with abortion. In 1991, he served up the government’s case before the Supreme Court in Rust v. Sullivan, arguing for the right to restrict the speech rights of family-planning organizations that receive public funding. The result of that decision upheld a gag rule on such organizations, denying them the right to mention abortion as one alternative to continuing a pregnancy. Note that we're not talking here about whether the organization in question can administer an abortion; we're talking about talk, or the mandatory lack thereof.
The full range of lawful options open to a pregnant woman is a thing of which one must not speak if federal dollars are involved. (Note that it's perfectly fine to impose with federal dollars, via the current president’s "faith-based initiatives," a theological balm for a troubled soul.)
If Roberts had merely addressed his brief to the government's pro-gag-rule stance, that would have been bad enough. But his brief addressed the legality of abortion itself, writing of Roe v. Wade, the 1971 decision that struck down laws prohibiting abortion, "We continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled ... [T]he Court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion ... find[s] no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution."
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