Prometheus 6

Supreme Court Nominee Miers Wanted Bar Association's Abortion Rights Stance to be Neutral, Donated to Antiabortion Group
[Oct 04, 2005]

White House counsel and Supreme Court justice nominee Harriet Miers in 1993 was a leader of an unsuccessful attempt to persuade the American Bar Association to reconsider its stance supporting abortion rights and, in 1989, donated to a Texas antiabortion group, the AP/Austin American-Statesman reports. As president of the State Bar of Texas in 1993, she questioned whether the ABA should "be trying to speak for the entire legal community" on the issue of abortion rights, which, she said, had "brought on tremendous divisiveness" in the organization (Curry, AP/Austin American-Statesman, 10/3). The ABA's position, adopted in 1992, endorses the basic ruling in the 1973 Supreme Court case Roe v. Wade -- which effectively outlawed state abortion bans. Miers said at the time that the position "has no meaning unless it is endorsed in fact by the membership," but ABA's policy making body rejected a proposal by her and other Texas lawyers to put the issue to a referendum by mail to the organization's approximately 360,000 members (Gearan, AP/Washington Post, 10/3). Darrell Jordan, a former president of the Texas bar, said the dispute over the ABA position went beyond personal beliefs on the issue, adding that many supporters of abortion rights, including himself, shared Miers' view that it was "inappropriate" to have support for abortion rights be the "official position of the legal profession" (Toner, New York Times, 10/4). Jordan said that after working closely with Miers for about 30 years he does not know her position on abortion rights (Cummings et al., Wall Street Journal, 10/4). President Bush on Monday nominated Miers to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Miers, who was the first woman to serve as president of the State Bar of Texas and the Dallas Bar Association, has never been a judge and therefore has no judicial record (Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Report, 10/3).