In a bombshell admission, Judge Sonia Sotomayor — who yesterday spoke of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund as being a “mainstream” organization — admitted she was aware that the group, on whose board she served for twelve years, fought common-sense regulations on abortion.
Responding to a question by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on the six briefs filed by the PRLDEF during her tenure as a board member there — briefs which argued that abortion was a “fundamental right” — she responded.
“I can’t answer that question, because I didn’t review the briefs. I did know that the fund had a health-care docket that included challenges to certain limitations on a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy under certain circumstances.”
One brief on the PRLDEF’s “health-care docket”argued against Ohio’s parental-notification law. It said:
that establishment and free exercise clause concerns also militate toward the invalidation of these abortion-specific notice statutes. If Justice Stevens is correct that the belief that life begins at conception is religious, [cit. omit.] then these statutes would seem to both reflect and accomplish state endorsement of religious beliefs. [cit. omit.] The Court would need to examine whether the ostensible secular purposes are “sham,” [cit. omit.] in light of the fact that abortion is singled out for notice from other, at least, equally life-shaping reproductive choices based on a purpose to save “lives”, and that parents who are religiously opposed to abortion are among its primary beneficiaries. It would also need to consider whether the state, through giving the parents confidential information (far more valuable here than financial assistance), has enhanced these parents’ ability to indoctrinate, control, or punish their minor daughters who choose abortion, and, thereby, has crossed the critical line between respecting the parents’ privacy right to inculcate religion in their children.
These are the views that Sotomayor now admits she knew she was promoting as a board member of the PRLDEF and as chair of its litigation committee. These are the views that the Supreme Court nominee considers “mainstream.”
AUL’s Sotomayor411.com has the full story on the PRLDEF briefs, including full-text links.
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Dawn,
That last sentence quoted from their brief is chilling: parents “indoctrinate, control, or punish their minor daughters who choose abortion, and, thereby, [have] crossed the critical line between respecting the parents’ privacy right to inculcate religion in their children”.
Parents have a natural right to form their children; these people see parents as if they were officials of the State. Fascism. Who draws this “critical line” in the relationship between parents and children? Judges?
Yuch.