Tuesday, October 18, 2005

BushCorp™ nominee on record against abortion rights

After all the nod-nod, wink-wink going on between BushCorp™ and the religious right about SCOTUS nominee Harriet Miers' evangelical street-cred, the other shoe has finally dropped: proof of her oppostition to abortion rights and Roe v. Wade, from the WaPo:

Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers once pledged that she would "actively support" a constitutional amendment banning abortions except to save a mother's life, participate in antiabortion rallies, and try to block the flow of public money to clinics and organizations that help women obtain the procedure.

Those 1989 written promises to an antiabortion group, made as she was campaigning for a seat on the Dallas City Council, came to light in documents that Miers delivered to the Senate yesterday. They emerged one day after she assured two senators that no one knows how she would vote on Roe v. Wade , the landmark case that legalized abortion nationwide.

This revelation should surprise no-one who's been paying attention. From religious right kingmaker James Dobson's assurances, to Bush's clumsy pronuncements about the importance of her religion to her suitablility, Miers has clearly been chosen for her anti-choice proclivities by an administration that doesn't want to admit it's doing just that.

Well that's all over now. The only question remaining is how this will play out in Senate confirmation hearings. John Roberts got a pass on the abortion question because the lack of any specific record on the subject.

The irony here is that Miers, like Roberts, was likely chosen specifically because she lacked the judicial paper trail so damning to BushCorp™ appointees afraid of their own records.

So now the question stands as this: is Harriet Miers the staunch anti-abortionist she portrayed herself to be when running for a seat on the Dallas city council, or was she merely pandering to the religious right in order to get elected?

Inquiring minds want to know.

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