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Kagan, Politicking, and
the Abuse of Science
Part One of Four By Dave Andrusko Good evening. Part Two today discusses PPFA's aggressive expansion in Nebraska. Part Three looks at the increase of euthanasia in Holland, while Part Four is a letter from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops. 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.
Sometimes juxtaposing headlines can be extremely illuminating. For example, harkening back to yesterday's opening statement of Supreme Court nominee Solicitor General Elena Kagan, the New York Times's headline reads, "Kagan Promises Impartiality as Hearings Open." By contrast over at National Review online, we read "Kagan's Abortion Distortion: How the Supreme Court nominee manipulated the statement of a medical organization to protect partial-birth abortion." If you take Kagan's opening statement at face value, she is the epitome of moderation, judicial humility, and deference. If you read Shannen W. Coffin's analysis at National Review, you come away with a decidedly different--and far more accurate--assessment. At explained at the end of his article, Mr. Coffin "was the deputy assistant attorney general in charge of the defense of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act during the Bush administration." He knows a lot about the back and forth that finally culminated in enactment of the ban on partial-birth abortion and the Supreme Court's acceptance. Coffin, like all the rest of us, knows even more now, thanks to papers released by the Clinton Presidential Library. (Kagan worked for Clinton from 1995-1999.) I will touch on only some of Coffin's extremely detailed and highly informative explication of Kagan's role in maintaining the viability of Clinton's veto of a bill to ban partial-birth abortion. The nub is her role vis a vis the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and ACOG's role vis a vis the courts. ACOG's pronouncement on partial-birth abortion was treated as gospel by various courts. "In other words, what medical science has pronounced, let no court dare question," Coffin writes. "The problem is that the critical language of the ACOG statement was not drafted by scientists and doctors. Rather, it was inserted into ACOG's policy statement at the suggestion of then–Clinton White House policy adviser Elena Kagan." According to Coffin, the initial draft statement of ACOG task force "did not include the statement that the controversial abortion procedure 'might be' the best method 'in a particular circumstance.' Instead, it said that the select ACOG panel 'could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.'" (Emphasis added.) When you read Coffin's piece you will see that Kagan recognized that this would be disastrous to pro-abortion Democrats looking for political cover and thus she "set about solving the problem. Her notes, produced by the White House to the Senate Judiciary Committee, show that she herself drafted the critical language hedging ACOG's position." So what, you might ask. Remember the Supreme Court first dealt with partial-birth abortion at the state level in 2000 when it struck down Nebraska's ban. As Coffin notes, "The Court relied on the ACOG statement as a key example of medical opinion supporting the abortion method," ACOG being understood to be "nonpartisan." Later, on the federal level, the ban on partial-birth abortion was promoted and signed into law by President George W. Bush. Eventually, the Supreme Court upheld the law, but along the way, U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf enjoined the ban. "Like the Supreme Court majority in the prior dispute over the Nebraska ban, Judge Kopf asserted that the ACOG policy statement was entitled to judicial deference because it was the result of an inscrutable collaborative process among expert medical professionals," Coffin writes. Of course at the time Judge Kopf couldn't know the truth when he wrote "neither ACOG nor the task force members conversed with other individuals or organizations, including congressmen and doctors who provided congressional testimony, concerning the topics addressed" in the ACOG Statement. " What is the truth? That the supposedly apolitical ACOG had shared its initial take on the legislation privately with Kagan and that "language purporting to be the judgment of an independent body of medical experts devoted to the care and treatment of pregnant women and their children was, in the end, nothing more than the political scrawling of a White House appointee"--Kagan. We've written about this in TN&V and in the current issue of National Right to Life News. Mr. Coffin learned of Kagan's pivotal role in refashioning ACOG's statement when he read NRLC's letter to the Senate dated June 23. NRLC then made available to him the relevant documents from the Clinton Presidential Library. Coffin's piece is very, very much worth your reading. It can be found at http://article.nationalreview.com/437296/kagans-abortion-distortion/shannen-w-coffin?p=1 |
