The First New Justice in 11 Years.

I was at the printer, about 20 minutes away from seeing the first copy of the July NRL News roll off the presses, when my assistant called to tell me that Associate Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had announced her retirement. While my printer was none too happy, I, like you, was delighted to hold publication off for a few days so as to get a better feel for the lay of the land. O'Connor's departure is great news.

There are two predominate theories on the upcoming confirmation hearings for whomever is O'Connor's successor: Armageddon or relative calm. Most subscribe to the former. Pro-abortion Democrats will oppose any nominee who doesn't pledge allegiance to Roe v. Wade, now and forever--no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

It's difficult to image a depth to which they will not sink. Robert Novak's column from mid-May reported that NARAL had hired a political consulting firm which petitioned the U.S. Judicial Conference in Washington for "financial information on 30 appellate judges in all but one of the country's judicial circuits, including nine widely mentioned Supreme Court possibilities." In one of the great understatements of recent times, Novak observed, "[C]ompiling financial profiles of judicial nominees plows new ground."

It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that pro-abortionists are desperately trying to dig up dirt on prospective nominees. Unable to defeat these nominees on the basis of their qualifications, the NARALs of this world are preparing the kind of gutter attack they unleashed 18 years ago against Judge Robert Bork.

When O'Connor was nominated 24 years ago, I was a grassroots reader of National Right to Life News. I carefully pondered the words of NRLC's President and Vice President, who testified against her nomination. There were inklings and signs everywhere that O'Connor supported abortion. But the prospect of appointing the first female Supreme Court justice steamrolled this and all other opposition. O'Connor was confirmed 99-0.

Ironically, iO'Connor made a comment in her first abortion case two years later that gave us pause. Did she really understand that Roe has no grounding in the Constitution and that technology was making Roe's abortion-on-demand, trimester-based holdings increasingly incoherent--

That's clearly a conclusion one could draw from her comments in the 1983 Akron case. Writing last April in the New York Times about Justice Harry Blackmun, reporter Linda Greenhouse put her remarks in context.