Republican litmus test

Senate Judiciary Committee members may have described Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’ questionnaire responses as “incomplete to insulting.” But one item from the background information released to the committee was revealing: the disclosure that she favored a constitutional amendment that would ban abortion during her 1989 campaign for Dallas City Council. Given that she took this position on a candidates’ survey for Texans United for Life, perhaps it was an example of Miers telling people on both sides of the issue what they wanted to hear. But the combination of her survey responses, pro-life financial contributions and stand against an American Bar Association endorsement of Roe v. Wade—along with a fair amount of anecdotal evidence—strongly suggests that Miers is pro-life.

Miers’ overall judicial philosophy still matters more than certainty about her personal abortion views. That she believes abortion is wrong or even that it should be illegal tells us nothing about whether she would be bound by stare decisis on Roe. We who are pro-life abhor the policy of abortion of demand Roe imposed on our country. But the 1973 decision has also long been recognized as a good test of how an aspiring jurist sees the role of the courts. More than any other Supreme Court ruling, Roe is symbolic of judicial arrogance, black-robed social engineering and a determination to evade the original public understanding of the Constitution.

Miers and the White House are also in a precarious position in the Senate. Democrats—and some pro-choice Republicans like Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter—are likely to push Miers to either disavow her 1989 abortion views or distinguish them from how she would rule as a justice. But anything she says that might reassure these senators has the potential to erode her already tenuous support from Senate conservatives. The hearings could become all abortion, all the time.