LIFE DIGEST: Roe would be history had Clark said ‘yes’ to Reagan, author says
- Dec 17, 2007 - comment
The Supreme Court would have overturned Roe v. Wade at least 15 years ago had the person who probably was President Reagan’s first choice accepted nomination as a justice, a political biographer says.
In 1981, Associate Justice Potter Steward retired, giving Reagan his first opportunity to name a member of the high court. One of the people on the president’s short list was William Clark, his close friend and deputy Secretary of State. When he was California’s governor, Reagan had named Clark to the state’s high court.
Paul Kengor, a professor at Grove City (Pa.) College, explained what happened, and what might have been, in an interview posted Dec. 12 on the weblog of fellow Grove City professor Warren Throckmorton. Kengor recently coauthored a biography of Clark after previously writing two books on Reagan.
Reagan “called Clark into the Oval Office and asked if he wanted to be considered for the court vacancy,” Kengor said. “Clark said no. He said he enjoyed what he was doing for Reagan’s foreign policy, and he never came to Washington to die there. He wanted to serve Reagan faithfully for a few crucial years and then return to California to get back to his family and life on his ranch.
“When Clark said that, President Reagan pulled a note card from his coat pocket—which included only a few names, I believe with Clark’s at the top—and said, ‘That’s what I thought you’d say, Bill.’ Reagan scratched off Clark’s name.”
Reagan nominated Sandra Day O’Connor to the high court instead. She refused to vote to overturn Roe, the 1973 decision that struck down state laws against abortion. She also joined with fellow justices Anthony Kennedy, another Reagan nominee, and David Souter in leading the court in a 1992 ruling to affirm Roe while permitting some state restrictions.
In the interview, Throckmorton asked Kengor if Clark would have voted to reverse Roe.
“Absolutely,” Kengor said. “Bill Clark would have been the swing vote that overturned Roe v. Wade, particularly through the 1992 case, Casey v. Planned Parenthood. He would not have voted the awful way that Sandra Day O’Connor voted.”
Clark also might have persuaded Kennedy, a fellow conservative Catholic whom he knew well, to vote differently, Kengor said.
“Had Clark served on the high court, the vote on Casey could have flipped from 5-4 against Casey to 5-4 in favor, and perhaps even 6-3 in favor if Clark influenced Kennedy,” Kengor said.
Clark became Reagan’s national security adviser and “laid the foundation to win the Cold War,” Kengor said.
Kengor’s biography of Clark is titled The Judge. His co-author is Patricia Clark Doerner.
Abortion trumps conscience, ACOG says
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) just doesn’t get it, some pro-life leaders say.
ACOG’s Committee on Ethics issued in November a position paper saying pro-life physicians should refer women seeking abortions to doctors who will perform the procedures. The statement even says doctors “with moral or religious objections” should locate their practices near physicians who will perform abortions.
David Stevens, chief executive officer of the Christian Medical Association, and 27 co-signers called for the “repudiation and withdrawal” of the paper in a Dec. 7 letter to ACOG.
The five-page statement “suggests a profound misunderstanding of the nature and exercise of conscience, an underlying bias against persons of faith and an apparent attempt to disenfranchise physicians who oppose ACOG’s political activism on abortion,” Stevens and the others said. “The paper indicates that ACOG views the exercise of conscience and faith not so much as a cornerstone right in a democracy or as a historic hallmark of medicine, but rather as an inconvenient obstacle to abortion access.”
ACOG’s demand that pro-life doctors refer patients to abortion providers “contradicts a basic corollary of conscience,” the letter said. “The same life-honoring, objective principles— ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ and ‘first, do no harm’—that persuade many conscientious physicians not to perform abortions also persuade them not to recommend someone else to do the deed.”
The letter writers described as “incredible” ACOG’s insistence that pro-life doctors relocate near abortion providers.
“ACOG’s aggressive political advocacy for abortion has significantly impaired its ability to speak for all physicians and to judge matters of medical ethics without bias,” they said.
Parents should be taxed for children, prof says
Parents who have more than two babies should pay a hefty carbon tax to offset the harm each child will do to the environment, an Australian medical professor says.
Barry Walters, a clinical associate professor of obstetric medicine at the University of Western Australia, not only urged the per-child tax but seemed to commend the coercive population control program of China in a letter published in the Dec. 3/17, 2007 issue of The Medical Journal of Australia.
“Far from showering financial booty on new mothers and thereby rewarding greenhouse-unfriendly behaviour, a ‘Baby Levy’ in the form of a carbon tax should apply, in line with the ‘polluter pays’ principle,” Walters wrote.
He suggested a tax of at least $5,000 at birth for every child beyond two in a family, as well as a yearly levy of $400 to $800 per child. This would underwrite the planting of enough trees to offset the greenhouse gases produced by each child, Walters said.
He also said sterilization and the use of artificial birth control methods could gain “carbon credits” to be counted against income taxes.
An Australian pro-family leader said Walters had an emission problem of his own.
“I think self-important professors with silly ideas should have to pay carbon tax for all the hot air they create,” said Angela Conway, spokeswoman for the Australian Family Association, according to News.com.au. “There’s masses of evidence to say that child-rich families have much lower resource consumption per head than other styles of households.”
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