By Susan Brinkmann, OCDS
Staff Journalist
As the debate leading up to the almost certain nomination of U.S. Solictor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court gets underway, conservative lawmakers have announced that if they had the numbers, they would demand an investigation into Kagan’s role in doctoring a medical group’s statement that influenced the outcome of the 1997 partial birth abortion debate.
CNSNews.com is reporting that Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) told reporters Tuesday that conservative members of the Senate would launch an inquiry into Kagan’s role in the incident if only they had enough Senators to push the point.
“I’ll tell you,” responded Sen. Coburn, “if we were running the Senate, we’d have the inquiry.”
The incident involves a memo, written by Kagan while she was serving as Associate White House Counsel to President Bill Clinton, in which she states that it would be a “disaster” if a medical statement by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) were released because it did not support the need for partial birth abortion. Instead, the statement said the College “could identify no circumstances under which [the partial-birth] procedure . . . would be the only option to save the life or preserve the health of the woman.”
Kagan then made suggestions about how to change the statement so that it supported the use of partial birth abortion, suggestions that eventually became part of ACOG’s final statement. This statement was later quoted in the Supreme Court opinion Stenberg v. Carhart which overturned a Nebraska law banning the gruesome late-term procedure.
During her testimony last month before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Kagan defended herself, saying that “there was no way in which I would have or could have intervened with ACOG, which is a respected body of physicians, to get it to change its medical views on the question.”
To date, ACOG, a professional medical assocation that has long been pro-abortion, has refused to comment on Kagan’s involvement, or why it would send a draft of their statement to the White House in the first place.
As pro-life activist Jill Stanek, R.N. wrote on her June 30 blog, the facts in this case show “science and medicine colluding with pro-abortion ideology at the highest levels.”
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