Ad Attacks Roberts' Role in Clinic Case
WASHINGTON — John G. Roberts Jr.'s 1991 arguments in a case involving the right of protesters to block access to abortion clinics emerged Monday as a central point of contention between opponents and supporters of his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A leading abortion rights group, NARAL Pro-Choice America, released the first anti-Roberts attack ad, highlighting his role in Bray vs. Alexandria Women's Health Center, a case the high court heard that year. "America can't afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans," the ad says.
At the time, Roberts was the principal deputy in the U.S. solicitor general's office, which filed a friend-of-the-court brief on the side of the protesters. Citing attorney-client privilege, the White House has refused to make public any internal Justice Department documents from that period of Roberts' career. Democrats say release of the papers could shed light on his motivations for intervening in that case and others.
The NARAL ad suggests that the court's decision in the Bray case encouraged abortion opponents to adopt increasingly aggressive tactics. It features a nurse who was severely injured in a 1998 clinic bombing saying, "I'm determined to stop this violence, so I'm speaking out."
NARAL plans to spend $500,000 over the next two weeks to broadcast the ad on cable news channels in Maine and Rhode Island, the home states of three of the more moderate Republican senators.
Roberts' supporters responded quickly.
"President Bush called for a dignified process, and this type of attack certainly doesn't qualify as dignified," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. "Every word in the ad is false and dishonest, and it comes from a group that is outside the mainstream."
The Republican National Committee issued a release insisting that Roberts was only acting on behalf of the administration of George H.W. Bush, which was arguing that the protests did not meet the criteria for discrimination in the law under challenge. The committee also said Roberts' brief did not defend the use of violence.
The RNC cited a memo written by Roberts in 1986, when he was an assistant in the White House counsel's office, that makes the opposite argument: "No matter how lofty or sincerely held the goal, those who resort to violence to achieve it are criminals," Roberts wrote.
