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August 29, 2007
Quick Hit: Gonzales’ anti-choice legacy
In the wake of Attorney general Alberto Gonzales' resignation, let's not forget his lovely anti-choice history. Page Rockwell at Salon says...
When I heard about [the resignation], my first thought wasn't about what his overdue departure will mean for women's issues. His audacious defenses of administration policies on torture and domestic surveillance, and his role in the firing of U.S. attorneys, make it easy to forget that Gonzales is also the guy behind Gonzales v. Carhart and Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, the landmark cases in which the Supreme Court upheld the speciously named 2003 Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act.Which is sort of amazing, because that decision was a huge victory for the campaign to chip away at women's reproductive rights. As the Washington Post noted earlier this year, the court's opinion "marked the first time justices have agreed that a specific abortion procedure could be banned"; in a piece by Broadsheet's Lynn Harris, Center for Reproductive Rights president Nancy Northrup observed that the opinion basically overturned three decades of settled constitutional law. But because it's Gonzales we're talking about, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act decision doesn't even make the first page of his résumé; he's flown in the face of settled law so many times that his role in restricting abortion access feels like a footnote.
Indeed, but that certainly doesn't mean we shouldn't take note of it. So Gonzales, good riddance.
Posted by Jessica at August 29, 2007 12:24 PM