NRLC president Carol Tobias (via NRLC News)
“In filling the vacant seat” left by the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, National Right to Life Committee president Carol Tobias is warning pro-lifers that “the stakes could not be higher.”
She calls on the Senate to refuse to take action on whoever President Barack Obama nominates to replace Scalia, for the sake of “who decides whether unborn children will be protected, whether religious liberty will be protected, and whether the free-speech rights of groups out of favor with the liberal elites will be protected (among other things).”
“Regardless of what they said during their confirmation hearings,” Tobias continues, “every justice appointed by President Clinton and President Obama has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to use raw judicial power to remove authority from elected legislators, in order to advance the liberal policy agenda, even where no constitutional provision remotely justified such anti-democratic decrees.”
Therefore, she predicts that whoever Obama nominates “would provide the fifth vote to strip elected legislators of all meaningful authority to protect unborn children and regulate abortion,” as well as “the fifth vote to effectively nullify statutory and constitutional protections against mandatory participation in paying for or providing abortions” and “to strip away the First Amendment protections that the Court has recognized for independent speech about those who hold or seek political office.”
Tobias also points out that Democratic leaders such as Barack Obama and Senator Chuck Schumer, who are now arguing that Republicans have an obligation to grant Obama’s nominee an up-or-down vote, categorically opposed President George W. Bush’s judicial nominees, including a filibuster attempt against Justice Samuel Alito.
Tobias concludes by declaring, “any senator who fails to recognize what is at stake, any senator who wilts under the coming onslaught from the mainstream media and the liberal elites, will forfeit any claim to pro-life support.”
