The onslaught against the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court has started. Yesterday, NARAL began an ad campaign that claims that Roberts supports abortion clinic bombers.
Reality, of course, is different:
The ad, sponsored by NARAL Pro-Choice America, focuses on Roberts’s role in a case involving whether a 19th-century anti-Ku Klux Klan statute could be used to shut down blockades of health clinics by abortion protesters. The solicitor general’s office filed a friend-of-the-court brief siding with the clinic protesters, including Operation Rescue. The high court ruled 6 to 3 against the health clinics in January 1993.
(….)
The case came during a period of widespread blockades of abortion clinics, including in the Washington suburbs, and involved figures convicted of anti-clinic violence. The issue before the court in Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic , however, focused more narrowly on whether the anti-discriminatory Ku Klux Klan Act could be applied against abortion protesters.
In his oral argument before the court, Roberts said, according to a transcript of the proceedings, “The United States appears in this case not to defend petitioners’ tortious conduct, but to defend the proper interpretation” of the statute.
Roberts’s allies said his views on violence were clear from a 1986 White House memo, endorsed by Roberts when he served in the White House counsel’s office during the Reagan administration, which said violent abortion protesters should not receive special consideration for presidential pardons. “No matter how lofty or sincerely held the goal, those who resort to violence to achieve it are criminals,” the memo said.
And here’s the kicker:
NARAL President Nancy Keenan defended the ad but said, “We’re not suggesting that Mr. Roberts condones clinic violence.”
No, you’re just completely mis-representing what he said in 1986 and implying that he condones the bombing of abortion clincs because he took an opposing legal position.
I am not at all surprised that this is happening. The Supreme Court, once the branch of government the most removed from politics, is now the most politicized branch of government. This is a high stakes nomination and people are going to whatever it takes to win, even it means distorting the truth.
