Kagan's questionable abortion ethics

Clarke Forsythe:

Shannen Coffin’s National Review Online article yesterday described how Elena Kagan, while working in the Clinton White House, intervened to edit a supposedly scientific evaluation of the partial-birth abortion procedure that became the policy statement of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) — and was later relied upon by a federal court to strike down the Bush administration’s federal partial-birth abortion ban.

As Coffin explained, in December 1996, Kagan received a draft statement by an ACOG “select panel,” which said that ACOG “could identify no circumstances under which this procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.” Kagan drafted an amendment which said that the procedure “however, may be the best or most appropriate in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”

Under questioning by Sen. Orrin Hatch this morning, Kagan admitted, “The document is certainly in my handwriting.”

In effect, Kagan wrote into the ACOG policy statement the “health” exception language from Doe v. Bolton, which — Kagan told Sen. Feinstein yesterday — required that any regulation must provide an exception for the “health” of women seeking abortion. Doe defined “health” as emotional well-being. Risk is simply “exposure to the chance of injury or loss.” Thus, “health risk” in abortion law means the potential for exposure to the chance of a loss of “well-being.”

Note how slippery Kagan’s amendment was: “may be the best or most appropriate in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.”

A federal judge in Nebraska relied on the ACOG policy statement to strike down the federal prohibition....

...
I suppose this is up to the standards of the Clinton White House such as they were, but it should not pass the smell test in the real world. I as pretty sure the Democrats on the committee will not care.

There is more on her questionable conduct here.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t...
Read more

Is the F-35 obsolete?

Headline USA: Pentagon Fires Back after Musk Calls Its Most Expensive Project ‘Obsolete’ 'Yeah, as I'm sure you can appreciate, Mr. Musk is, currently, a private citizen, I'm not going to make any comments about what a private citizen may have to say about the F-35....'   ... ... Drones appear to be replacing jets for many operations.  The Russia-Ukraine war is an example of that.  Drones are often hard to detect and can be used for intelligence operations as well as for attacking enemy targets.  It would not surprise me to see drones engaging other drones in combat.  They also cost much less than manned fighters.  
Read more