Kagan Urged Clinton To Ban Late-Term Abortions In 1997

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, who was a White House adviser in 1997, urged then-President Bill Clinton to ban late-term abortions.

Documents reviewed Monday by The Associated Press show Kagan encouraging Clinton to support a bill that would have banned all abortions of viable fetuses except when the physical health of the mother was at risk. The documents from Clinton’s presidential library are among the first to surface in which Kagan weighs in on the thorny issue of abortion.

The abortion proposal was a compromise by Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle. Clinton supported it, but the proposal failed and Clinton vetoed a stricter Republican ban.

In a May 13, 1997, memo from the White House domestic policy office, Kagan and her boss, Bruce Reed, told Clinton that abortion rights groups opposed Daschle’s compromise. But they urged the president to support it, saying he otherwise risked seeing a Republican-led Congress override his veto on the stricter bill.

This appears to have been more of a political calculation than a legal one, but perhaps points to Kagan as not being as ideological as she is pragmatic.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.