Washington – Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers disclosed in a 1989 survey that she was opposed to abortion except to protect the life of the mother. The disclosure triggered disapproval from supporters of abortion rights but failed to calm some conservative Republicans.
Miers’ answers to the 16-year-old abortion survey were delivered Tuesday as part of her responses to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.
Because she spent her career as a private corporate lawyer before joining the Bush White House, her answers provided the first public glimpse of her approach to the Constitution. And her answers to the 1989 survey, which she filled out for the anti-abortion group Texans United for Life when she was a candidate for the Dallas City Council, constituted the clearest indication yet of her personal views on abortion.
The survey did not ask whether Miers believed the Constitution protects a right to abortion.
“If Congress passes a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit abortion except when it was necessary to prohibit the death of the mother, would you actively support its ratification by the Texas Legislature?” the survey asked.
Yes, Miers answered. She told the group that she would support a state ban on abortion, oppose public funding for abortions, participate in “pro-life” events, and use her “influence as an elected official” to “promote the pro-life cause.”
Again on Tuesday, the White House walked a cautious line in defending Miers.
While acknowledging Miers’ answers to the abortion questionnaire, it was also quick to note that Miers’ personal views should not be used to predict how she would rule on the issue.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, “Harriet Miers, just like Chief Justice (John) Roberts, recognizes that personal views and ideology and religion have no role to play when it comes to making decisions on the bench.”
Yet only last week, President Bush drew criticism from some on the right and the left who believed he was touting Miers’ faith as code for how she would rule on social issues.
Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee and one of a handful of Republican abortion-rights supporters in the Senate, declined to comment on Miers’ answers, adding that he planned to question her closely on the issue.
Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., a committee member who has threatened to vote against Miers if he fears she might uphold abortion rights, said his concerns had not diminished. “It is a piece of evidence,” he said, but it is not as indicative of her legal views as a judicial opinion or law-review article might have been.
Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Miers had not addressed his reservations. “My questions have been, ‘Is she qualified? Is she competent?’I am not swayed one way or the other on that.”
Miers’ most comprehensive explanation of her approach to the Constitution came in response to a standard question about “judicial activism” from the Judiciary Committee questionnaire.
She invoked many of the same themes Roberts did in his own answer to that question, but she put more emphasis on the limits of the court’s power and less emphasis on respect for precedents.
“Parties should not be able to establish social policy through court action, having failed to persuade the legislative branch or the executive branch of the wisdom of their preferred course,” she wrote.
Many conservatives view Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 case that established a constitutional right to an abortion, as a judicial override of legislative authority.
Miers did offer some assurances to supporters of abortion rights who view the same case as settled precedent. “Judicial activism,” she said, could also occur when courts fail to respect previous decisions, and “mere disagreement with a result” is not reason enough to overturn a precedent.
“But reconsideration under appropriate circumstances is also necessary,” she continued, citing the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision that found racial segregation in the public schools unconstitutional.