Roberts - "New" Judge

So Bush nominated this guy Roberts for the Supreme Court. I confess, I know nothing about him, so I must go to the internets. Oh, I take that back, I do know one thing about him - he ruled last week that it was OK for Bush to ignore the Geneva Convention & continure to hold people at Gitmo & the many other prisons in the American Gulag. But back the the internets, here is a section from NARAL's press release about Roberts. It is, I believe, time to be afraid, very afraid.

Hostility to Reproductive Rights

• As Principal Deputy Solicitor General, Roberts argued in a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court (gratuitously, since the case did not implicate Roe v. Wade) that “[w]e 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… finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Con-stitution.”

• In Rust v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court considered whether Department of Health and Human Services regulations limiting the ability of Title X recipients to engage in abortion-related activities violated various constitutional provisions. Roberts, appearing on behalf of HHS as Principal Deputy Solicitor General, argued that this domestic gag rule, whereby doctors working in family planning programs receiving federal funds were barred from even discussing abortion options with patients, did not violate constitutional protections.

• Roberts, again as Principal Deputy Solicitor General, argued for the United States as amicus curiae in support of Operation Rescue and six other individuals who routinely blocked access to reproductive health care clinics, arguing that the protesters’ behavior did not amount to discrimination against women, even though only women could exercise the right to seek an abortion. Intervening as amicus is a wholly discretionary decision on the part of the Solicitor General. Here the government chose to involve itself in a case in support of those who sought to deprive women of the right to choose through massive, often violent, blockades. Roberts argued that the protesters’ blockades merely amounted to an expression of their opposition to abortion and that a civil rights remedy was therefore inappropriate. The case - Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic – presented the Supreme Court with the question of whether the Civil Rights Act of 1871 provided a federal cause of action against persons obstructing access to abortion clinics. The year after Bray was decided, Congress enacted the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act to protect women and health care providers from violence and harassment.

• Overturning a woman’s right to choose was a cornerstone of the first Bush Administration, as signaled by the fact that Solicitor General Kenneth Starr himself argued reproductive rights cases before the Supreme Court. The Court was so accustomed to the Solicitor General and the Principal Deputy Solicitor General arguing for the overturn of Roe that, during Mr. Roberts’ oral argument before the Supreme Court in Bray, a Justice asked, “Mr. Roberts, in this case are you asking that Roe v. Wade be overruled?” He responded, “No, your honor, the issue doesn’t even come up.” To this, the Justice said, “Well that hasn’t prevented the Solicitor General from taking that position in prior cases.”