Via the Daily Women’s Health Policy Report:
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) failed to mention Roe v. Wade in a speech Tuesday outlining his judicial philosophy at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., the Miami Herald reports. The speech led some abortion-rights advocates to criticize the senator for his lack of “straight talk.” …
During his speech, McCain said if elected president, he would appoint justices who are similar to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito (Bumiller, New York Times, 5/7). “I will look for people in the cast of John Roberts, Samuel Alito and my friend the late [former Chief Justice] William Rehnquist — jurists of the highest caliber who know their own minds, and know the law, and know the difference,” McCain said. He added that he would “look for accomplished men and women with a proven record of excellence in the law and a proven commitment to judicial restraint” (Gaynor, Reuters, 5/6).
According to the Wall Street Journal, McCain’s speech included references that “appeared calculated to reassure judicial conservatives.” Although McCain did not name any Supreme Court justices he believes have abused their powers, he criticized justices for using the words “penumbras” and “emanations.” McCain said such words are “airy constructs … the court has employed over the years as poor substitutes for clear and rigorous constitutional reasoning.” According to the Journal, these words come from the court’s 1965 decision in Griswold v. Connecticut to strike down a state ban on contraceptives for married couples. In that decision, the court found that marital relations fell within a “penumbra” of various provisions that created a “zone of privacy.” According to the Journal, some evangelical leaders interpreted McCain’s remarks as critical of the 1973 Roe decision, which found that constitutional privacy guarantees include abortion rights (Bravin/Holmes, Wall Street Journal, 5/7).