WASHINGTON – A senior House Democrat said Tuesday that senators should fully question Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to make sure she supports abortion rights, in light of her previous backing for limiting late-term abortions.
In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Rep. Louise Slaughter of New York said she views as "troubling" a 1997 memo Kagan wrote urging then-President Bill Clinton to back a ban on all abortions of viable fetuses except when the physical health of the mother was at risk.
Slaughter, the co-chair of the House Pro-Choice Caucus, wrote that the lack of a judicial record for Kagan, who has never been a judge, makes it imperative that the committee scrutinize her abortion views...
In the 1997 memo, Kagan urged Clinton to support a ban on late-term abortions, a political compromise that put the administration at odds with abortion rights groups. Kagan and her boss, Bruce Reed, told the president that he should support the ban because it might help him avoid even stricter language from a Republican-led Congress. Clinton supported it, but the proposal ultimately failed and Clinton vetoed a stricter Republican ban.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100519/ap_on_go_su_co/us_kagan_supreme_court