The fury continues over Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ firing of a number of U.S. attorneys for what increasingly appears to be purely political reasons. (I smell a new "gate" permutation on its way — Gonzalesgate, anyone?) Amid all this coverage, people are taking little notice of some other recent and troubling news about our judicial system under the guidance of President Bush.
On March 19, the public learned that Richard Honaker would be nominated for a U.S. District Court judgeship in Wyoming. The troubling part? Back in 1991, Honaker authored a bill in the Wyoming state legislature that would have enacted a ban on abortions in that state. Adding insult to injury, an "exception" under the law for survivors of rape and incest would have required women to report the sexual assault within five days.
In a telephone interview with a local newspaper, Honaker said,
[A judge should] never substitute his political views for those of the Legislature or Congress. ... As a state legislator, I took positions on a lot of legislative issues and public policy issues, and one of them was on the abortion issue. That was my role at that time. But my role as a judge would be far different.
Forgive the skepticism, but even Clarence Thomas, perhaps the most fervently anti-abortion justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, once said, "I have no reason or agenda to prejudge the issue or to predispose to rule one way or the other on the issue of abortion, which is a difficult issue." And we all know how that turned out.
Roe v. Wade legalized abortion in the U.S. in 1973. It’s amazing that the issue of safe and legal access to abortion is one we will have to worry about more than 30 years later. (Could you imagine judicial nominees being ambiguous about their feelings on Brown v. Board of Education in the 1980s???)
President Bush has a long history of nominating people with well-documented, extreme anti-abortion views to the federal judiciary. Many of those nominees have been blocked by the congressional threat of a filibuster, and one can only hope that Honaker’s nomination will also be blocked by the new Congress. Though even having pro-choice members of Congress on your side isn’t always enough ...