Contact: Matthew Faraci, Americans United for Life, 202-556-1994, press@aul.org
WASHINGTON, June 29 /Christian Newswire/ -- Moments ago, responding to a line of questions from Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Kagan confirmed her belief that "Roe (v. Wade) and Doe (v. Bolton) require" that any state "regulation" of abortion protect the "health" of women seeking abortion. Kagan isolated the Supreme Court's holding in the 2007 case, Gonzales v. Carhart -- which upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban of 2003 without a "health" exception -- by stating that the Gonzales decision only pertained to a particular abortion procedure.
"Elena Kagan, for the benefit of her supporters in the abortion lobby, reaffirmed her support for abortion in the extreme, without limitations or restrictions," said Dr. Charmaine Yoest, President and CEO of Americans United for Life. "The American people don't support this out-of-the-mainstream position and they don't want a judge who has already pre-judged the issue."
Under the Roe / Doe framework, an abortionist can offer any reason imaginable to justify performing an abortion at any time during a woman's pregnancy. However, while upholding the Partial Birth-Abortion Act of 2003 in Gonzales v. Carhart without the massive health loophole, the Court also arguably narrowed the unlimited health exception created in Doe.
Therefore, abortion law is quite confused and is far from settled. The fact that Kagan believes that the Roe / Doe health exception still applies unchanged to all laws pertaining to abortion indicates that she has not changed from the passionate ideologue who advocated against meaningful regulations of abortion while working for President Clinton.
During her time in the White House, Kagan argued for a health exception that went further than the one required in Doe. She argued that a woman should have access to a partial-birth abortion if her doctor felt it was the best procedure for her health -- regardless of whether she actually "needed" an abortion at all.
This expansive reading of a "health exception" would actually take abortion jurisprudence farther than ever before, and drastically undermine the ability of state and federal legislators to pass meaningful regulations of abortion. In light of the growing body of evidence that abortion is actually dangerous to women, and the advancement of technology that helps unborn children survive earlier outside of the womb, this is deeply troubling.
Americans United for Life (AUL) is a nonprofit, public-interest law and policy organization whose vision is a nation in which everyone is welcomed in life and protected in law. The first national pro-life organization in America, AUL has been committed to defending human life through vigorous judicial, legislative, and educational efforts at both the federal and state levels since 1971.
AUL's legal team has been involved in every pro-life case before the U.S. Supreme Court including the successful defense of the Hyde Amendment. AUL also publishes Defending Life, the most comprehensive state-by-state legal guide of its kind, which is distributed annually to legislators across the nation.
Recently, Americans United for Life detailed the facts on taxpayer-funding of abortion during the debate over federal health care legislation, provided legal assistance to states working to opt out of abortion provisions created by federal health care law, and has played a major role in educating policymakers on the record of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan.
