[Mb-civic] On Abortion, Few Seem to Take Roberts at Face Value - Charles Babington - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

On Abortion, Few Seem to Take Roberts at Face Value
Nominee's Testimony Discounted by Groups On Both Sides of Issue

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 17, 2005; Page A02

In 20 hours of Senate testimony this week, John G. Roberts Jr. made 
several comments that would seem reassuring to abortion rights advocates 
and unsettling to those seeking to outlaw abortion. There is a 
constitutional right to privacy, he said. And justices should show 
significant deference to long-settled cases such as the landmark 1973 
Roe v. Wade abortion ruling.

But the reaction from both camps in the abortion wars was startling. 
Abortion rights groups took no comfort in the chief justice nominee's 
remarks, and antiabortion groups took no offense. The reason, activists 
on the left and right say, is that both sides vividly remember Clarence 
Thomas's 1991 confirmation hearing in the same Senate Judiciary 
Committee room.

Abortion rights groups vilify Thomas, and antiabortion groups hail him, 
for telling senators he had never discussed or thought about Roe , only 
to advocate its rejection soon after joining the high court. That 
14-year-old hearing echoed so loudly in the Hart Senate Office Building 
this week that virtually none of the activists seemed willing or able to 
take Roberts's remarks at face value.

Roe is "settled as a precedent of the court," Roberts told the 
committee, and is "entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis 
." The term is Latin for "to stand by that which is decided."

"I do think that it is a jolt to the legal system when you overrule a 
precedent," Roberts said. "It is not enough that you may think the prior 
decision was wrongly decided."

Were these not hints that Roberts, if confirmed as chief justice, would 
be loath to revisit Roe ?

Not at all, said Leonard Leo, on leave from the conservative Federalist 
Society to promote the confirmation effort. "What he said about privacy 
is, in substance, no different from what other recent nominees have 
said, . . . Justice Clarence Thomas in particular," Leo said in an 
interview. And Roberts's discussion of stare decisis , he said, "was 
almost as though you were having a glimpse into the way a judge would 
sit in his chambers and do the analysis: . . . Maybe there are times 
when a jolt in the legal system is acceptable."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/16/AR2005091601847.html?nav=hcmodule
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