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Kagan Confirmed 63-37
Part Two of Five By Dave Andrusko
The Senate's confirmation of Elena Kagan to replace Justice John Paul Stevens came in an anti-climatic 63-37 vote yesterday. Only one Democrat voted against Kagan, while five Republicans voted for Obama's Solicitor General. Kagan's elevation means the High Court now has three female justices. But if the final outcome was hardly a cliff-hanger, there were a number of interesting considerations that came up along the way that could come into play more forcefully should Obama get the chance to nominate a third justice. National Right to Life made no secret of its opposition. (See www.capwiz.com/nrlc/issues/alert/?alertid=15225531&type=CO and http://www.nrlc.org/Judicial/NRLCletterToSenateOnKaganJune232010.pdf.) Documents that were released showed that Kagan was not only bad on abortion, she had also taken taking objectionable positions on such issues as assisted suicide, human cloning, and political free speech. But it was Kagan's role in the ferocious partial-birth debate in the mid-1990s that gathered the most attention. As NRLC explained in a June 23 letter to senators, documents released from the period 1995-99 in which Kagan was an aide to President Clinton "reveal Ms. Kagan to have been a key strategist -- perhaps, indeed, the lead strategist within the White House -- in the successful effort to prevent enactment of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act during the Clinton Administration. . . . Ms. Kagan played a key role in keeping the brutal partial-birth abortion method legal for an additional decade." NRLC was the first to reveal Kagan's role in covertly persuading officials of the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (AGOG) to revise a statement that ACOG later issued as a supposedly authoritative statement on the medical aspects of the partial-birth abortion method -- a statement that was subsequently cited by federal judges and Supreme Court justices. In July former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop wrote an open letter urging senators to "reject the politicization of medical science" and vote against Kagan's nomination. "The problem for me, as a physician," Koop wrote, "is that she was willing to replace a medical statement [about partial-birth abortion] with a political statement that was not supported by any existing medical data. During the partial-birth abortion debate in the 1990s, medical evidence was of paramount importance." All of this could explain the less-than-overwhelming support for the 50-year-old Kagan. For example, according to Gallup, she became "the first successful nominee in recent years whose nomination was backed by less than a majority of Americans." Only 44 percent of Americans said they favored Kagan's confirmation in a mid-July poll, while 34 were opposed, and 22 percent had no opinion. And while Kagan did secure 63 votes in the Senate, "Kagan's meager tally is five fewer than Sonia Sotomayor last year, 15 fewer than John Roberts got in 2005 and pales in comparison to the 96-3 coronation of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 1993," according to Politico. Editor's note. Please send all of your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are now following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha. |
