And while he is noticeably mum about the Bork episode now as he bids for the chairmanship, Specter bragged about his nasty treatment of Bork during his campaign. “I not only voted against Bork, I led the charge against him,” he said in October.
Specter invites us to examine his record. He said he has supported every one of President Bush’s judicial nominees. He claims he has no pro-life litmus test. Well, in 1987, when it mattered, when Roe was imperiled, Specter broke ranks and joined the opposition. In 1986, when it didn’t matter, when the pro-Roe majority remained safe, he voted to put Antonin Scalia on the High Court—someone arguably more conservative and outspoken than Bork. And someone who, like Bork, thinks the text and original meaning of the Constitution, not contemporary attitudes, should govern its interpretation. That was evidently okay with Specter in 1986. The next year it was “extreme.”
President Bush made a costly mistake last spring when he campaigned for Specter against his pro-life opponent in the Republican Senate primary. With the President’s help, Specter squeaked by in the primary contest, winning by one percent. The President helped secure the re-election of a man whose uncompromising commitment to abortion rights trumps all else, including what political loyalty, if any, he has for the President.
Now Senate Republicans are considering whether to imitate Bush’s mistake by making Specter chairman of the Judiciary committee. Pro-life Republicans are pondering whether to hand power to a man who thinks the Court’s abortion ruling is untouchable and sacrosanct. Would someone remind me, please, which party was it that they called the “stupid party?”
After 31 years of abortion on demand in America, the “values voters” who helped put George Bush back in the White House have every reason to expect a pro-life Supreme Court majority by 2008. President Bush, who said we should seek a “society that values life from its very beginnings to its natural end,” may fill up to four High Court vacancies in the next four years.
The end of Roe is at hand—just as it was in 1987. But if Arlen Specter becomes chairman, it will be Bork II all over again and who knows how many more million unborn children will die.
D. James Kennedy, Ph.D., is President of Coral Ridge Ministries, a Christian broadcasting organization which reaches more than three million people weekly by radio and television. He is Senior Minister of the nearly 10,000 member Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, the author of more than 60 books, Founder and President of Evangelism Explosion—a lay evangelism training program used in every nation on earth, and Founder and Chancellor of Knox Theological Seminary in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
