Ashcroft: optimal candidate?

John Ashcroft, George W. Bush’s nominee as the nation’s highest law enforcement officer, has had a public career that spans 28 years. It is a career that has been heavily punctuated by unrelenting and single-minded hostility to reproductive freedom and family planning.

In 1999, Sen. Ashcroft voted in favor of overturning Roe vs. Wade. (Harkin-Boxer Resolution to Partial-Birth Abortion Ban of 1999). Both Maine Senators opposed the resolution.

During a brief bid for the Republican nomination for presidency last year, Ashcroft stated, “They say you can’t legislate morality … well, you certainly can.”

One can argue that Ashcroft’s views on reproductive freedom should not disqualify him from consideration for the position of U.S. attorney general. Yet he himself voted against Dr. Henry Foster for U.S. surgeon general because, “…the optimal candidate for this responsibility should not be someone who has committed abortions, because there is a large group of individuals in this country for whom a person who has committed abortions cannot be a real leader.”

My doubt about how a man as transparently hostile to reproductive freedom as Ashcroft can enforce the federal laws protecting a woman’s right to choose finds its source in two little-publicized positions Ashcroft has taken during his time in the Senate. They provide, I believe, a revealing glimpse of the man who would become our next attorney general:

In 1999, Ashcroft wrote in a letter to Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell that he would oppose a Senate amendment to require that the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan cover the cost of FDA-approved contraceptives, citing concerns that it would violate fetal constitutional rights. (Letter dated June 21, 1999)

Also in 1999, Ashcroft voted against an amendment that would prevent persons who commit acts of violence at reproductive health care facilities from using bankruptcy proceedings to avoid paying damages, court fines and penalties against them as a result of their illegal activities. (S625., April 27, 1999)

Sen. Olympia Snowe sponsored the measure calling for insurance coverage of contraceptive devices for federal employees. His reason for opposing it can be traced to his extreme opposition to contraception in nearly all cases and his view that fetuses, from the moment conception, have civil and constitutional rights.

Ashcroft’s vote against the amendment that would prevent those who commit violent acts at reproductive health facilities from taking shelter in federal bankruptcy laws strikes at the heart of his capacity to uphold other, similar laws. Specifically, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which was used to prosecute John Salvi when, five years ago, he shot and killed two Massachusetts women working in two different reproductive health centers where abortions were performed.

I don’t think Ashcroft would disagree with the observation that his Senate career, indeed his entire life in public service, is based almost exclusively on opposition to the principles of Roe v. Wade. And yet, despite his prolific anti-choice record, Sens. Snowe and Susan Collins have both indicated they will support his nomination.

The vote on Ashcroft’s confirmation as the next U.S. attorney general has now been delayed by a week. More questions about his suitability are surfacing. During this time, we encourage Maine supporters of reproductive freedom to continue to contact Senators Snowe and Collins, urging them to carefully consider just how out of step Ashcroft’s long-held views on reproductive freedom are with the views of their Maine constituents.

Throughout their service in Washington, our senators have repeatedly expressed their support for a woman’s right to choose. One can only hope, as we do, that our senators will ask themselves: Is Ashcroft the “optimal candidate” for attorney general? Can he be trusted to safeguard the very principles that Snowe and Collins have stood for during their years of public service representing the women of Maine? And perhaps most important: If Ashcroft is our new president’s nominee for attorney general, just what kind of nominee can we expect in the event of a Supreme Court vacancy, when Roe vs. Wade is at stake?

George A. Hill is executive director of the Family Planning Association of Maine.