Sonia Sotomayor’s Record On Abortion: Let’s Review

Everyone is assuming that a pro-choice President would choose a pro-choice Supreme Court Justice, right? Then how come yesterday White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said President Obama, “did not ask [Sonia Sotomayor about] that specifically”?

Turns out Sotomayor has never directly ruled on whether the Constitution protects a woman’s right to an abortion, but here’s what she has said in regards to abortion during her time serving on the United States Court of Appeals, Second Circuit:

2002 Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush - Ruled Against CRLP Via “Mexico City Policy”

In this case, the CRLP sought to prove the unconstitutional nature of the so-called, “Mexico City Policy” which states that, in order for private, foreign organizations to receive funding from the United States government, said foreign organizations must neither perform nor promote abortions in general, Sotomayor voted to uphold the policy stating, “The Supreme Court has made clear that the government is free to favor the anti-abortion position over the pro-choice position and can do so with public funds.” The Mexico City Policy has been a partisan dividing line since it was instituted by Ronald Reagan in 1984. (It was ended by Bill Clinton, re-instated by George W. Bush and rescinded by President Obama.)

2004 Amnesty America v. Town of West Hartford

In this case, pro-life activists sought to sue the police department in the Town of West Hartford, Connecticut for excessive force during two peaceful demonstrations that took place in 1989. Sotomayor ruled that Amnesty America deserved their day in court.

Calling China’s Forced Abortion Policies ‘Persecution’

The New York Times reports that Sotomayor has ruled in several immigration cases that the government of China’s population-control policies, which include forced abortions, constitute persecution. And she has criticized her colleagues who claim only women should be allowed asylum based on that policy.

The termination of a wanted pregnancy under a coercive population control program can only be devastating to any couple, akin, no doubt, to the killing of a child,” she wrote, also taking note of “the unique biological nature of pregnancy and special reverence every civilization has accorded to child-rearing and parenthood in marriage.”

But as Phillip Jauregui, president of the conservative Judicial Action Group, told the Times, “even ‘the most radical feminist’ would object to forcing women to abort wanted pregnancies.” Agreed. It’s difficult to tell from any of these rulings whether Sotomayor is sympathetic to the pro-life agenda or simply a stickler for the law. And though Sotomayor was raised Catholic, just ask Padre Cutié how much water that holds for most Catholics today.

Being Hispanic

Then, of course, there’s Judge Sotomayor’s Hispanic background which Steven Walderman of pro-life site BeliefNet says is, “a culture that [doesn't] hold the pro-life position in contempt.” Is there any culture in America that raises kids to think abortions are great? It’s a taboo subject even for the most liberal among us and continues to be one of those individual choices we all must make.

Her Feministish Umbrella

Yesterday CNN noted that Judge Sotomayor carried this umbrella, featuring pictures of famous literary women, to her press conference at the White House. “We warn you,” Jeannie Moos joked, “it has feminist leanings.” None of the women authors pictured, Louisa May Alcott, Mary Shelley, Emily Dickinson, Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Emma Lazarus, or Virginia Woolf, were alive during Roe v. Wade, but perhaps they would have been pro-life were they around then. Jane Austen, certainly.