Reply #2: related: Miers Led Bid to Revisit Abortion Stance (ABA to not support [View All]

[UpInArms]

women's rights)

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=558&e=10&u=/ap/20051003/ap_on_go_su_co/scotus_miers_abortion

President Bush's choice to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice and moderate abortion rights supporter
Sandra Day O'Connor was a leader in an unsuccessful fight to get the nation's largest lawyers' group to reconsider its pro-abortion rights stance.

As president of the Texas State Bar in 1993, Harriet Miers urged the national American Bar Association to put the abortion issue to a referendum of the group's full membership. She questioned at the time whether the ABA should "be trying to speak for the entire legal community" on an issue that she said "has brought on tremendous divisiveness" within the ABA.

Miers was among a group of lawyers from the Texas bar and elsewhere who had argued that the ABA should have a neutral stance on abortion.

The ABA's policy-making body overwhelmingly rejected the Texas lawyers' group's 1993 proposal to put the issue to a referendum by mail of the ABA's then-roster of about 360,000 members.

"Our current position (in favor of abortion rights) has no meaning unless it is endorsed in fact by the membership," Miers said at the time.

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