{"id":879,"date":"2009-05-26T12:02:48","date_gmt":"2009-05-26T12:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/is-sotomayor-an-abortion-centr.html"},"modified":"2009-05-26T12:02:48","modified_gmt":"2009-05-26T12:02:48","slug":"is-sotomayor-an-abortion-centr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/is-sotomayor-an-abortion-centr.html","title":{"rendered":"Is Sotomayor An Abortion Centrist?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One has to assume Obama wouldn&#8217;t have appointed Sonia Sotomayor without some indication that she&#8217;s pro-choice but &#8212; based on very, very little information &#8212; I wonder if she might not end up being an abortion centrist.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\nFirst, in <em>Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush<\/em>, she actually <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/sotomayor----her-record-on-abo.html\">ruled <em>against<\/em> the pro-choice group<\/a> on Constitutional grounds.<br \/>\nSecond, in <em>Amnesty America v. Town of West Hartford<\/em>, she ruled <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/when-sotomayor-ruled-in-favor.html\">in favor of the rights of anti-abortion protestors.<\/a><br \/>\nNeither of these cases dealt with the merits of abortion. Nonetheless, it&#8217;s interesting that in the two cases we know of that related partly to abortion, she took the position that pro-life groups would have wanted (albeit for reasons unrelated to Roe v. Wade). At a minimum, these cases would seem to indicate that, if she is pro-choice, she didn&#8217;t let those views affect her view of the relevant law.<br \/>\nThird, though we certainly can&#8217;t generalize, it is the case that Hispanics are the most pro-life members of the Democratic coalition. In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/imgs\/tout\/story\/twelvetribeschart.pdf\">Beliefnet&#8217;s &#8220;12 Tribes&#8221; study<\/a> conducted in the summer of 2008, 58.9% wanted strong restrictions on abortion, while 41.1% took the pro-choice position.  She may well be in the 41.1% but at a minimum she grew up in an environment where the pro-life position was well-respected.<br \/>\nI realize this is thin gruel, and new information might turn up any second showing her strong pro-choice position but I&#8217;m based on what we know now I&#8217;m not sure we can assume she&#8217;s hard-line pro-choicer.<br \/>\nUPDATE: Interestingly, Americans United for Life has issued their statement opposing Sotomayor &#8212; but it lists no specific pro-choice comments or rulings from the judge. Instead, they focus on her general judicial philosophy: &#8220;She believes the role of the Court is to set policy which is exactly the philosophy that led to the Supreme Court turning into the National Abortion Control Board.&#8221;<br \/>\nUPDATE #2: The White House briefing also points to her ruling in <a href=\"http:\/\/openjurist.org\/445\/f3d\/127\/lin-v-gonzales\">Lin v Gonzales<\/a> in which she ruled in favor of a Chinese woman who sought asylum in part because of the force sterilization and abortion policies of the Chinese government.<br \/>\nUPDATE #3:  She reportedly was on the baord of a group formerly called the Maternity Center Association, now called Childbirth Connect. They list <a href=\"http:\/\/www.childbirthconnection.org\/article.asp?ck=10084&amp;ClickedLink=0&amp;area=27\">&#8220;20 Rights of Childbearing Women.&#8221;<\/a> None of them relate to the &#8220;right to choose.&#8221; In fact, I find no mention of abortion on their website.<br \/>\nUPDATE #4:  Nancy Keenan, the head of NARAL, the leading pro-choice group, praised her accomplishments but had no sense of whether Sotomayor is pro-choice: &#8220;We look forward to learning more about Judge Sotomayor&#8217;s views on the right to privacy and the landmark Roe v. Wade decision as the Senate&#8217;s hearing process moves forward.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One has to assume Obama wouldn&#8217;t have appointed Sonia Sotomayor without some indication that she&#8217;s pro-choice but &#8212; based on very, very little information &#8212; I wonder if she might not end up being an abortion centrist.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Is Sotomayor An Abortion Centrist? - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/is-sotomayor-an-abortion-centr.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is Sotomayor An Abortion Centrist? 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- Steven Waldman","og_description":"One has to assume Obama wouldn&#8217;t have appointed Sonia Sotomayor without some indication that she&#8217;s pro-choice but &#8212; based on very, very little information &#8212; I wonder if she might not end up being an abortion centrist.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/is-sotomayor-an-abortion-centr.html","og_site_name":"Steven Waldman","article_published_time":"2009-05-26T12:02:48+00:00","author":"swaldman","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/is-sotomayor-an-abortion-centr.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/is-sotomayor-an-abortion-centr.html","name":"Is Sotomayor An Abortion Centrist? - Steven Waldman","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-05-26T12:02:48+00:00","dateModified":"2009-05-26T12:02:48+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/is-sotomayor-an-abortion-centr.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/is-sotomayor-an-abortion-centr.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/05\/is-sotomayor-an-abortion-centr.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Is Sotomayor An Abortion Centrist?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/","name":"Steven Waldman","description":"Author of 'Founding Faith'","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/f14bd19925fcfcd0bd7c74a678fddded","name":"swaldman","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/e7f\/e7f50c10d0832a00d2b7690a72d45b5ex96.jpg","caption":"swaldman"},"description":"Steven Waldman is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of Beliefnet. He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. His writings have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Review, The Atlantic, Slate, and many others.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/author\/swaldman"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}