Saturday, January 14, 2006

Undue Burdens on Real People Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL, identifies one of the most disturbing aspects of Samuel Alito's testimony and previous rulings -- the lack of any indication that he was concerned with or had a feeling for the impact of his rulings on the lives of real people --- and his non-concern for their personal privacy. The New York Times has this excerpt from Michelman's testimony at the confirmation hearings yesterday: A woman's right to choose is a powerful manifestation of privacy, but it is one right among many and all of them should concern us. There is no sense in Judge Alito's writings or rulings that privacy is a fundamental constitutional right. In his record, not only are individuals often powerless against the prerogatives of the state, individuals are more often than not simply absent altogether. In many ways, what Judge Alito has written is less disturbing that what he omits, any sense of how his legal rulings bear on real people whose lives are shaped by his decisions. When he ruled that a Pennsylvania law requiring women to notify their husbands before obtaining an abortion was not, quote, an undue burden, there was no sense that a woman like me ever existed or even mattered. When he wrote that commonly used methods of birth control could be classified as methods of abortion, there was no indication he considered the women who would be forced into unwanted pregnancies. The Washington Post has this video of Michelman's compelling testimony. And for one last go-round about Concerned Alumni of Princeton (CAP), the ultra-conservative group that Alito cited as a reference for a job promotion in the Reagan Justice Dept., here's Bruce Reed (Princeton '82) writing in Slate about the grumpy old men's club that CAP was and that the Supreme Court is. -RH 8:03:07 AM    comment []

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