WP Analysis: Alito's Reasoning Points to a Likely Vote Against Roe v Wade

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Analysis
Nominee's Reasoning Points to a Likely Vote Against Roe v. Wade
By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 2, 2005; Page A06

As far as anyone yet knows, Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. has not made any public declaration calling for the overruling of Roe v. Wade , the 1973 Supreme Court decision that recognized a constitutional right to abortion.

At least on the surface, Alito's record as an appeals court judge contains something for everyone. In 1991, he voted to uphold a Pennsylvania law that would have required married women to notify their husbands before getting an abortion. In 1995, however, he cast a deciding vote on a three-judge panel to strike down what abortion rights advocates saw as Pennsylvania's onerous regulations on federally funded abortions for victims of incest or rape. And in 2000, he concurred in a ruling that struck down a New Jersey ban on the late-term procedure called partial-birth abortion by opponents.

Yet for supporters and skeptics, Alito's record is not ambiguous, and it points toward the same conclusion: He would probably vote to strike down Roe . And they say this for a similar reason: It's not the results Alito reached in past cases that matters, it's his legal reasoning.

Alito's dissenting opinion in the 1991 case, which was later rejected by a 5 to 4 vote of the Supreme Court, shows "there was a little bit of interpretation, and more room for him to apply his own perspective to it," said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center, which backs abortion rights. As a result, she said, his true anti- Roe colors came through.

As for Alito's vote to strike down Pennsylvania's rules on abortions funded by Medicaid, conservatives dismiss that as a ruling that turned on the finer points of administrative law. "It can't be characterized as an abortion ruling on the merits," said Jan LaRue, chief counsel of Concerned Women for America, which opposes Roe....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/01/AR2005110101555.html