What Bush's shortlist thinks about abortion

From the online magazine Slate comes some info on those the shortlist and what they did when given the opportunity to decide on cases dealing with abortion. Some highlights:

In 1992 and 1997, Judge Emilio Garza (U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit) struck down two Louisiana statutes for restricting abortion more tightly than Roe and Casey allow. But in each case, Garza wrote a concurrence stating his disagreement with those Supreme Court decisions. "I would allow the people of the State of Louisiana to decide this issue for themselves," he wrote in the 1992 case. In 1997, he called Roe and Casey "inimical to the Constitution."

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In 1991, Judge Samuel Alito (U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit) dissented from the lower-court decision—affirmed by the Supreme Court in Casey—that struck down a Pennsylvania law that would have required women to inform their husbands before getting abortions. Alito read the Supreme Court's earlier decisions as holding that an abortion regulation did not pose an undue burden unless it banned abortion, gave another person a veto over a woman's choice, or had the "practical effect of imposing severe limitations." A law that had a "heavy impact on a few women" should be upheld, Alito said.

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In 2000, as a judge on the Texas Supreme Court, Alberto Gonzales (now U.S. Attorney General) took part in two decisions that applied a state law allowing a teenage girl to have an abortion without notifying her parents if she could prove to a judge that she was "mature and sufficiently well informed." In one of the cases, Gonzales voted to allow a 17-year-old girl to have an abortion under the statute, though he was careful to say that he was simply following the directive of the legislature. "While the ramifications of such a law and the results of the Court's decision here may be personally troubling to me as a parent, it is my obligation as a judge to impartially apply the laws of this state without imposing my moral view," Gonzales wrote. In the second case, Gonzales held that the teenager petitioning the court had not shown that she had "thoughtfully considered the alternatives" to abortion, but sent her back to the trial court for another chance.

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You can never say for sure how someone will vote when they get to the Supreme Court—that's the beauty of judicial independence and life tenure. But based on their past statements and decisions, Roberts, McConnell, Garza, and Jones look like good bets to vote to regulate abortion more tightly and, if they get the chance someday, perhaps to overturn Roe v. Wade. Alito would probably do the same. How far Luttig would go is less clear—his statement of respect for Casey is clinical and drained of emotion, which makes it harder to tell. Gonzales' opinions in the Texas cases suggest that he doesn't much like the idea of teenagers having abortions without telling their parents. But in those cases and others, he has been inclined to respect previous Supreme Court decisions. That makes him the potential nominee most likely to follow O'Connor when it comes to Roe—and it explains why religious conservatives are so hostile to his potential nomination.

These highlights were on those potential nominees who are Catholic. You can read the whole piece here to get a sense of where other potential nominees stand.