"The same Senate that yesterday celebrated a compromise by ‘moderate members from both parties’ to avert the nuclear option has given a lifetime job to a serial judicial activist from Texas.

"Priscilla Owen’s radical practice of putting her personal beliefs ahead of the law and individual rights now gets a greater pool of potential victims. Even President Bush’s own attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, criticized Owen’s rulings as ‘an unconscionable act of judicial activism.’ In fact, Gonzales also has expressly criticized Owen’s legal conclusions in at least 10 published opinions related to cases beyond reproductive rights issues. Opposition to Owen is strong in the pro-choice community, but we are not alone. Owen is opposed by a broad coalition of civil rights, consumer, environmental, and worker rights’ organizations, all of whom have reviewed her extensive record on the Texas Supreme Court and concluded that our varied and various constituencies cannot get a fair hearing in her courtroom.

"Thousands of our activists contacted their senators urging them to oppose Priscilla Owen. We will build on their commitment to moderate, qualified judicial nominees as we work to stop Janice Rogers Brown and William Pryor. Americans do not support the Senate giving a green light to President Bush’s effort to stack the federal courts with nominees who would roll back individual freedoms and overturn Roe v. Wade."