Kagan Defends Expansive Health Exception on Abortion During Senate Hearing

by Steven Ertelt

LifeNews.com Editor

June 29, 2010

http://www.lifenews.com/nat6493.html

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Abortion advocate Elena Kagan defended expansive life and health exceptions on abortion during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings today on her nomination to the Supreme Court. The health exception is the part of the Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton decisions responsible for allowing unlimited abortions.

In those 1973 decisions, the high court essentially paved the way for legalized abortion for any reason throughout pregnancy -- even though legal abortions claim women's lives and cause them numerous physical and mental health problems.

During questioning today, pro-abortion Sen. Diane Feinstein of California asked Kagan, "Do you believe that the constitution requires that the health of the mother be upheld?"

"With respect to abortion generally, I think that the continuing holdings of the Court are that a woman's life and women's health must be protected in any abortion legislation," Kagan responded.

However, the majority of the members of the Supreme Court think differently and, in the 2007 ruling in Gonzalez v. Carhart, they determined that the national ban on partial-birth abortions did not need a health exception that would have rendered the ban meaningless and allowed all such abortions to remain legal.

Michael Ciccocioppo, the director of the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, says the testimony from Kagan to this point shows "it is clear that Ms. Kagan would be a judicial activist who would read things into the Constitution that simply aren't there."

“The American people deserve better in a Supreme Court nominee,” Ciccocioppo added.

He said Kagan's testimony makes it clear "that, rather than simply interpreting the law, she would work as a Justice to impose public policy from the bench."

'Kagan was a leading strategist in blocking the enactment of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban during the Clinton Administration. As a result, Kagan was instrumental in keeping the heinous partial-birth abortion procedure legal for an additional decade," Ciccocioppo said.

"Given the fact that Kagan’s brand of judicial activism would impose even more damage on the nation," Ciccocioppo said pro-life advocates should oppose her nomination.

Pro-life groups have described Elena Kagan as the stereotypical judicial activist and abortion advocate.

She clerked for pro-abortion Justice Thurgood Marshall, whom she lauded, and her writings dating back to her college days are filled with accolades for judges who took the law into their hands and twisted it for a desired outcome rather than relying on the people through their elected officials.

Kagan helped Bill Clinton defend his veto of a partial-birth abortion ban -- the gruesome abortion procedure when a baby is birthed halfway and then jabbed in the head with medical scissors, killing him or her. She helped Clinton find political cover for his decision to keep those abortions legal.

Kagan went as far as advocating that the Clinton administration not only ignore but manipulate the opinion of a national medical group that said there was never any medical justification for killing unborn children halfway out of the birth canal.

Kagan has also lauded human cloning and assisted suicide and we can expect those gruesome practices to expand if she becomes the next Supreme Court justice.