The Revealing ‘Abortion Rights’ Brief in Sotomayor’s Past

By Dawn Eden
June 5, 2009

As confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor get under way, one item from the jurist’s past that is drawing attention is a 1989 amicus brief she apparently endorsed that urged the continued liberalization of abortion law. It offers insight into Judge Sotomayor’s views that, in the words of vocal abortion-rights advocate Bonnie Erbe of US News & World Report, should elicit a “big sigh of relief from the pro-choice crowd.”

The brief was submitted to the Supreme Court as it considered the case Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (1989). This case involved a challenge made by various abortion providers in the state of Missouri against a Missouri law that defined conception as the beginning of life and also made it unlawful for public officials or public facilities to be used for abortions. the rest