The hearings for John Roberts as the President’s choice for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court began Monday morning. True to form, Senator Dianne Feinstein reiterated her “additional role” as spokesperson on behalf of women, specifically 145 million women and pro-abortion rights. On August 25, I wrote to Senator Feinstein in an attempt to help her remove the self-imposed burden of representing this many women in the hearing process.
The good news for the Senator is that she does not represent that many women on any issue. And it should be music to her ears that the polls have drastically changed on the issue of abortion itself: a 2003 survey by The Polling Company found that 54 percent of women identify their position on abortion as falling within one of three “pro-life” positions. Additionally, the 2003 study by the Center for the Advancement of Women showed that among twelve top issues for women, abortion ranked number eleven; it was well outpaced by issues such as “improving women’s health care” and “child care.”
Senator Feinstein used her opening remarks Monday to recite a litany that included the fight for women’s suffrage and numerous other issues. But she used this tactic to camouflage the one issue to which she and Senator Boxer have been inextricably tied: the extreme pro-abortion lobby – groups that don’t even support parents’ right to be notified when their under-aged daughter is set to have an abortion. This association with the radical left is at the core of everything Ms. Feinstein will say and do during these hearings.
But, she will not - indeed, she cannot - vote to support one of the most qualified judges ever nominated to the Court lest she abandon the base which has supported her over the years.
The “Roe” in Roe v. Wade, Norma McCorvey, long ago repented for the part she played in the wrongly decided Supreme Court decision in 1973. But, sadly, Senator Feinstein is caught in an age of long ago and far away, before science brought imaging machines of babies in their mother’s womb sucking their thumbs to public attention. And before so many women experienced the painful truth of the abortion issue personally.
As Newsweek accurately reported the day before President Bush nominated Judge Roberts to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor on the Supreme Court, pro-abortion activists met at the headquarters of NARAL Pro-Choice America and, after canvassing a long list of potential candidates, concluded they could support NO candidates. Clearly, no nominee from a conservative president could satisfy the fringe wing of the liberal base and Senator Feinstein is the general leading those misguided troops.
