Clinton White House papers released due to Elana Kagan's judicial nomination hearings reveal that she, not doctors, inserted the critical words in the select panel findings that have been used to justify partial-birth abortion:
There is no better example of this distortion of science than the language the United States Supreme Court cited in striking down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion in 2000. This language purported to come from a “select panel” of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), a supposedly nonpartisan physicians’ group. ACOG declared that the partial-birth-abortion procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular circumstance to save the life or preserve the health of a woman.” The Court relied on the ACOG statement as a key example of medical opinion supporting the abortion method.
Years later, when President Bush signed a federal partial-birth-abortion ban (something President Clinton had vetoed), the ACOG official policy statement was front and center in the attack on the legislation. U.S. District Court Judge Richard Kopf, one of the three federal judges that issued orders enjoining the federal ban (later overturned by the Supreme Court), devoted more than 15 pages of his lengthy opinion to ACOG’s policy statement and the integrity of the process that led to it.
Like the Supreme Court majority in the prior dispute over the Nebraska ban, Judge Kopf asserted that the ACOG policy statement was entitled to judicial deference because it was the result of an inscrutable collaborative process among expert medical professionals. “Before and during the task force meeting,” he concluded, “neither ACOG nor the task force members conversed with other individuals or organizations, including congressmen and doctors who provided congressional testimony, concerning the topics addressed” in the ACOG statement.
In other words, what medical science has pronounced, let no court dare question. The problem is that the critical language of the ACOG statement was not drafted by scientists and doctors. Rather, it was inserted into ACOG’s policy statement at the suggestion of then–Clinton White House policy adviser Elena Kagan.
The task force’s initial draft statement did not include the statement that the controversial abortion procedure “might be” the best method “in a particular circumstance.” Instead, it said that the select ACOG panel “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 just went through this with Senator Hatch. Didn’t clear up anything.
Posted by: KWM | June 30, 2010 at 10:40 AM
This information is very damning. It's lawyer-scripted "science" rubber-stamped by judges. This is technocracy at its worst. Unfortunately, I don't have high hopes that the Senators will pin Ms. Kagan down on this.
Posted by: Cooper | June 30, 2010 at 11:13 AM
The political process infuriates me. I am finding it so hard to pray for my leaders, because they are making such immoral or lazy choices.
I am not giving up on the American project, because America is still my most loved country that I know.
I am hoping that she will not be allowed to continue, because deceit and "spin" seem to be motivating her NON-JUDICIAL career. This buddy system, and back scratching is probably the exact reason why she will get on the bench.
America needs men and women politicians who are statesmen, with enough character, intelligence, and rhetorical ability to counter these spin-doctors and blatant bending of Truth.
Posted by: Erik | June 30, 2010 at 10:05 PM
After reading the linked article, and the memos that it cites, and finally tracking down the actual statement by the ACOG, it looks like this case is not as bad as it is being made out to be.
The charge is that Kagan distorted science for political ends. The evidence is that she suggested an alteration to the ACOG position statement.
This implies that the original statement was replaced with Kagan's statement. This is what made me track down the statement itself, which I think I have found here. If you look at the statement, you will see that the line,
is still there. It has not been replaced with Kagan's text. (It is possible that I have not found the final version of this statement, and that the line was removed, but it doesn't look like that is the case.) It looks like Kagan provided wording that better expressed what ACOG's position was, but that the ACOG authors hadn't stated as clearly. When you read the early draft of the statement, to which Kagan responded, you see language in there that indicates the same view that Kagan expressed. It's just that her expression was more clear.
This does not look like Kagan distorting the position ACOG. Everything I have seen here indicates that ACOG agreed with the White House position.
Posted by: eric | July 01, 2010 at 11:10 AM
eric,
I don't think whether she replaced their wording with her wording or not is the point.
Part of the reason the judges decided as they did was because:
The assumption being that they were an apolitical medical body only interested in expressing their view of the truth. If someone like Kagan influenced the language for her political ends (whether ACOG agreed with those ends or not), it calls into question the objectivity of their statement, especially if they inserted her words verbatim into the final document.
Regardless, thank you for doing the research and providing us with your take on the statement. After reading the document you linked to, the opinion of ACOG seems to be that they would prefer that no medical procedure be banned, on the chance that it might someday be found to be medically useful in other contexts. I would respectfully disagree with them in principle: I believe that there are medical procedures so horrible that they should never be used in any circumstances and could very well justify banning.
Posted by: NewbieTU | July 02, 2010 at 07:09 AM