‘Are you now, or have you ever been, Pro-Life?’
WASHINGTON, Jan 17, 2001 (LSN.ca) – Senator John Ashcroft, nominated for Attorney General by President-Elect George Bush, is having to respond to pro-abortion inquisitors in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ashcroft noted that “I believe Roe versus Wade as an original matter was wrongly decided. I am personally opposed to abortion. However he said that “the role of Attorney General is to enforce the law as it is, not as I would have it. I accept Roe and Casey as the settled law of the land. If confirmed as Attorney General, I will follow the law in this area and in all other areas.” He added that “The Supreme Court’s decisions on this have been multiple; they have been recent and they have been emphatic.” Witnesses against Ashcroft at the hearing will include Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion Rights Action League.
Cathy Cleaver, the spokesperson for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops on pro-life issues, decried the attempt by abortion advocates to disqualify pro-lifers as “pro-abortion McCarthyism”. “While pro-life advocates are warned not to make opposition to abortion a ‘litmus test’ for assessing appointments to public office, abortion advocates employ their own pro-abortion standard with impunity,” she said. “When did a belief in the inalienable right to life become grounds for denying people the opportunity to serve their country?”
See the Bloomberg report on the hearings and the NCCB release: https://quote.bloomberg.com/fgcgi.cgi?mnu=news&ptitle=Top%20World%20News&tp=ad_fin&T=au_storypage99.ht&s=AOmSZNBZ7QXNoY3Jv https://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/01-16-2001/0001405105&EDATE=