Here are my quick notes on the exchange between Elena Kagan and Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) on her partial-birth abortion memo.More at the Corner. Coburn says Kagan could be filibustered. We'll see.
12:03 P.M.: Hatch is taking up the topic of the Shannen Coffin piece. Could be interesting.
Hatch: "Did you write that memo?"
Kagan: "With respect, I don't think that's what happened here."
Kagan says "the document is certainly in my hand-writing. I don't know if the document is the product of a conversation I had with them . . ."
Kagan says Clinton had "strong views on this issue" and favored health exceptions. "We tried over the course of the period of time when this statute was being considered. . . to get him the best medical evidence on this subject as possible." "We tried to bring all the conflicting views to his attention."
"What ACOG thought was . . . on the one hand they couldn't think of a circumstance in which this procedure was the absolutely only procedure that could be used in a given case. . . but they could think of circumstances in which it was the medically best procedure . . . with the least risk attached to it."
"We knew that ACOG thought both of these things. . ."
Kagan goes on. Hatch asks again "did you write 'this would be a disaster'?" Kagan says yes, the disaster would be that ACOG didn't express both parts of what it believed.
"In their final statement, that sentence. . . that it was not the only procedure of course remained."
Hatch says "this bothers me a lot," that he know there are plenty of doctors in ACOG who did not believe partial-birth abortion was a necessary procedure. "That bothers me that you intervened in that particular area in that way."
Kagan says there is "no way" she "would have or could have" gotten ACOG to change its medical opinion.
I hope they do for at least 7 months (Jan. 2011). I have yet to see a poll that favors her being approved. She is definitely not someone we want in the Supreme Court, but filibustering her nomination is the only way I see of stopping her. Am glad that this question and her reply are on record, though.