Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Abortion Debate Intensifies, Awaits Nominee

Abortion has re-emerged as a hot issue, and if history is any indication, it will get even hotter when President Obama makes his Supreme Court nomination.

Obama -- who first spoke out for a nominee with "empathy" before a Planned Parenthood audience in 2007 -- rekindled conservatives' wariness over the weekend with his speech at the University of Notre Dame, calling for "fair-minded" dialogue and "common ground."

Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, found Obama's speech at Notre Dame troubling in light of the names at the top of his short list. "He continues to want to use rhetoric to describe a mythical common ground while at the same time pursuing a real radical actual agenda," Yoest said. Her group recently released a report criticizing possible nominees such as Solicitor General Elena Kagan, appellate judges Sonia Sotomayor and Diane Wood, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and outgoing Georgia Supreme Court Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears.

Across the aisle, neither the Planned Parenthood Action Fund nor Democrats For Life would speculate on how the issue will play out with no nominee yet announced. Democrats For Life Executive Director Kristen Day said she would "like to see someone a little more moderate on the abortion issue," but declined to comment specifically about Obama's short list. "When he picks his nominee, we'll talk to pro-life Democrats and formulate an opinion about where we are," Day said.

New polling shows Americans shifting to the right on abortion. On Friday, Gallup reported that more Americans consider themselves "pro-life" than "pro-choice" for the first time since the polling company began asking the question in 1995. In addition, new numbers from the Pew Research Center show support for legal abortion falling. Gallup concluded that "the dominant position on this question remains the middle option, as it has continuously since 1975: 53 percent currently say abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances."

How a potential SCOTUS nominee defines those circumstances could shape his or her confirmation battle. For example, Yoest said she was concerned that some of Obama's short-listers have opposed bans on partial-birth abortions, particularly Sears and Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm. The administration has "miscalculated in terms of thinking that they have more of a mandate than they have," Yoest said.

Planned Parenthood spokesman Tait Sye said his organization is "hopeful that the next Supreme Court justice is someone who will uphold the letter of the law and who understands the importance of protecting our civil liberties." He dismissed the importance of Gallup's pro-life numbers, noting a discrepancy between the percentage of Americans who identify themselves as pro-life (51 percent) and the percentage who support legal abortion in at least some circumstances (76 percent). This, Sye says, shows that the "terms 'pro-choice' and 'pro-life' no longer define the parameters of the debate."

But David Masci, a senior research fellow at the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said that the new poll results could be a factor in the nomination process. "The president may be under increased pressure from pro-choice groups to nominate someone who is absolutely airtight on this issue," Masci said. "That was almost certainly going to happen anyway, but [the new polling] may make pro-choice groups even more determined to ensure the president nominates someone who supports abortion rights."

If that happens, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Jeff Sessions of Alabama, said he's open to confirming a nominee who supports abortion rights. "Could I support a pro-abortion nominee? The answer is yes," Sessions said in an interview with C-SPAN over the weekend. "I think it's a great country. I don't expect nominees to come to the bench who do not have views on issues, and I don't expect them to not have been engaged in the great issues of the day," but "they shouldn't allow their personal view on abortion to shape how they define the law."