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Monday June 7, 2010


Memos Show Kagan’s Hand in Clinton-Era Abortion, Assisted Suicide Policy Decisions

By Peter J. Smith

WASHINGTON, D.C., June 7, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A number of memos have come to the fore with information about the views of President Barack Obama’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, Elena Kagan, on abortion and assisted suicide. The memos show that Kagan opined against a federal ban on assisted suicide, and demonstrated political savvy in keeping the Clinton administration from endangering already liberal abortion laws by antagonizing a Republican-led Congress.

When the Clinton Administration was faced by Oregon’s decision to legalize assisted suicide, Kagan, serving during this time as deputy director of Clinton’s Domestic Policy Council (DPC), argued against passing federal legislation making assisted suicide a federal crime.

In a handwritten note, she said, “I think this is a fairly terrible idea.” She added, however, that the idea had the support of Paul Begala, a former advisor to Clinton.

Kagan held her post at DPC from 1997-1999. The William J. Clinton Presidential Library released 46,500-pages of records last Friday to the U.S. Senate that contain these latest memos and notes authored by Kagan.

Another memo illuminates a little more how Kagan was adept at pursuing strategies that would help President Clinton maintain the status quo of legal abortion without provoking a pro-life response from the Republican-controlled Congress.

When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services wanted to expand Medicare funding to allow abortions for health reasons in response to pressure from abortion advocates, Kagan advised the President to embrace a strict interpretation of the Hyde Amendment.

Kagan warned that giving into the demands of “women’s groups” could “provoke the Republicans to enact contrary legislation,” thereby tightening up restrictions on abortion funding. Kagan said that the Domestic Policy Council supported keeping a strict interpretation, because “it stands the best chance of avoiding a high-profile legislative battle” in which pro-life lawmakers were especially positioned to win. The president adopted Kagan’s position.

An earlier Clinton-era memo had demonstrated a similar style of political savvy on abortion. The memo revealed that Kagan had a hand in crafting the Clinton administration’s successful strategy for defeating the 1997 partial birth abortion ban that had wide public support. She urged then-President Clinton to endorse a “compromise” partial birth abortion ban, known as the Daschle amendment, which was filled with so many loopholes that the National Right to Life Committee denounced it as “all exception and no ban.”

A Capitol Hill staffer told the Washington Times back then that an abortionist literally would have to indict himself in order to be charged with violating the Daschle amendment.

Kagan and her boss, Bruce Reed, at DPC admitted that while ideological “choice” groups would reject Daschle, the president’s support of that measure would have the best practical chance of defeating the momentum for a Congressional override of the president’s veto of a much stronger partial birth abortion ban. This proved the case.

Further evidence of Kagan’s determination to fight successful “rear-guard” actions to preserve the status quo on abortion in law are also evinced by memos written in 1988 during her clerkship under pro-abortion U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, a jurist whose vision of the law she called “a thing of glory.”

Kagan recommended that Marshall decline to review a case involving female inmates and whether or not they should be given taxpayer funded abortions. While Kagan agreed that the lower court’s ruling that taxpayers had to fund the abortions was “well-intentioned,” albeit legally “quite ludicrous” in certain parts, she warned that “this case is likely to become the vehicle that this Court uses to create some very bad law on abortion.”

Americans United for Life noted that at the time the Supreme Court had “repeatedly held that taxpayers are not required to fund abortions through their tax dollars.”

“Was she [Kagan] afraid the court would reinforce this precedent, or that the Court would expand the principle that taxpayers do not have to fund abortions?” queried the pro-life group in a statement.

Another memo co-authored by co-authored by Kagan and Clinton aide Jack Gibbons recommended the president advocate legislation banning human cloning for the sake of reproduction, but allow embryo-destroying human cloning for the sake of scientific research.

Senate Judiciary hearings on Kagan’s nomination are scheduled to begin June 28.

See additional coverage on Kagan by LifeSiteNews.com:

Memo Shows Kagan Helped Clinton-Era Defeat of Partial Birth Abortion Ban

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/may/10051211.html

Kagan Calls Extreme Activist Liberal Judge ‘My Judicial Hero’

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/may/10052708.html

Supreme Court Nominee Elena Kagan Hearings Set for June 28

https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/may/10052101.html

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