The New York Times reported today that two lawyers picked by the White House to lead the search for a Supreme Court nominee, Leonard Leo and Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of a legal center founded by Pat Robertson, "gradually won over most social conservatives to nearly unanimous support, even convincing them that the lack of a paper trail was an asset that made Judge Roberts harder to attack." [New York Times, 7/22/05]

The same article cited how Leo and Sekulow "made their case by recounting the briefs Judge Roberts had filed as a lawyer for Republican administrations, including one arguing against the validity of the abortion rights precedent Roe v. Wade." Sekulow specifically cited having worked "side by side" with Roberts, in apparent reference to the case on which they both worked defending Operation Rescue and other clinic protest groups that use violence and intimidation.

"John Roberts owes the American people the same degree of candor as he does his friends on the radical right -- whatever he's telling them that satisfies their concerns should be part of his public testimony as well. The same White House and radical right groups that are telling Americans to ignore John Roberts’ role as an activist lawyer in the Reagan and Bush administrations used his record of attacking Roe v. Wade to win over the most ardent anti-choice groups in the country," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "The 65 percent of Americans who support upholding Roe v. Wade know that John Roberts is not a moderate, consensus candidate. The radical right depended on John Roberts to fight to overturn Roe v. Wade during his tenure as a top political lawyer, and now they are fully assured that he will cast the final vote on the Supreme Court that overturns Roe v. Wade."

Some of the lowlights of Judge Roberts’ background include:

• As Deputy Solicitor General, Roberts argued in a brief before the U.S. Supreme Court (in a case that did not implicate Roe v. Wade) that "[w]e continue to believe that Roe was wrongly decided and should be overruled…. [T]he Court’s conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion… finds no support in the text, structure, or history of the Constitution."
• In Rust v. Sullivan, the Supreme Court considered whether Department of Health and Human Services regulations limiting the ability of Title X recipients to engage in abortion-related activities violated various constitutional provisions. Roberts, appearing on behalf of HHS as Deputy Solicitor General, argued that this domestic gag rule did not violate constitutional protections.
• Roberts, again as Deputy Solicitor General, filed a "friend of the court" brief for the United States supporting Operation Rescue and six other individuals who routinely blocked access to reproductive health care clinics, arguing that the protesters’ behavior did not amount to discrimination against women even though only women could exercise the right to seek an abortion.