Transcript for January 8

SEN. CORNYN: I believe he’ll be confirmed unless there’s this extraordinary use of the filibuster, abuse of the Senate rules, in order to prevent it, as has happened with a number of President Bush’s nominees. But I go back—the gold standard, as Senator Schumer himself said, was the American Bar Association Committee on Judicial Evaluation. They looked not only at temperament and qualifications, but integrity. This is not a person who’s outside the mainstream. He may be outside the liberal mainstream, which is the main complaint of some of the outside groups who are pressuring Democrat senators to filibuster and to oppose this nomination. And I hope that we’ll have a fair hearing. I hope he’ll be allowed to answer the questions. I’m sure there’ll be plenty of answers to all the questions. And there’s obviously been a lot of information already produced from this nominee. We know much more about this nominee than we knew about John Roberts when he was confirmed by a vote of 78-to-22 as chief justice of the United States.

SEN. SCHUMER: The key question, Tim, simply put, is: Is he, even if he’s conservative, within the mainstream or is he outside that mainstream?  We won’t know till the hearings.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Chuck Schumer, Senator John Cornyn, thanks for your views.

SEN. CORNYN: Thanks, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT: Next up, the two Kates, O’Beirne and Michelman, with very different views on abortion rights and feminism. They’re next, right here on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: Two books with very different views about women. Then the New York Times reporter who broke the story about domestic spying without court approval. His new book, after this brief station break.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: And we are back. Kate Michelman, Kate O’Beirne—the Kates. Welcome both.

MS. KATE O’BEIRNE: Thanks, Tim.

MS. KATE MICHELMAN: Thank you.

MR. RUSSERT: Kate O’Beirne, let me start with you. “Women Who Make the World Worse”—Who are they?

MS. O’BEIRNE: Tim, they’re the kind of women who—apropos our discussion this morning—hype the phony gender gap in order to intimidate politicians. They’re the kind of women who claim to celebrate women’s choices when it comes to family and career, but they only think there’s one responsible choice, which is following a male career pattern. People think that feminism is sort of a spent force. And my book makes the point that no, it’s not. The modern women’s movement is enormously influential. Their premises have been widely accepted in our institutions. They engage in social engineering in our schools, trying to—very hostile to little boys and boyhood; have enormous influence on our university campuses. We certainly saw that with the dispute over President Larry Summers at Harvard. And our institutions, I argue, are weaker as a result of these feminist ideologues.

MR. RUSSERT: What do you think of that philosophy?

MS. MICHELMAN: Well, I think that the conservative movement has spent a lot of years denigrating, demonizing feminism, and the word has received a lot of flak for—interesting—for a simple belief in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. I mean, that’s what feminism was and is about and continues to be important in addressing the inequities in society that exist for women. And I don’t think feminism is dead. I do agree that the word has been so demonized that many young women don’t identify with the word, but interestingly enough, the irony is that even though some young women don’t identify with the label feminism—actually, they’re rejecting all kinds of labels today—they fully embrace the ideals that feminism set forth; you know, equal opportunity, equal education, equal pay, reproductive freedom and choice, the right to determine the course of one’s life. That is what feminism was really about. And...

MS. O’BEIRNE: I endorse all of those goals. I endorse the equal opportunity. I endorse the equal pay. Discrimination in pay, of course, has been outlawed since 1963 and education since 1972. Those are the phony goals.

MS. MICHELMAN: Well...

MS. O’BEIRNE: I don’t believe that men and women are interchangeable. I don’t believe marriage is a patriarchal plot. And along with an awful lot of other women, I don’t believe that women’s equality rests on an unrestricted right to an abortion. And that position on the part of feminists has cost them the allegiance of millions of other women who also don’t believe that Roe v. Wade, the most radical abortion policy in the Western industrialized world, is so key to women’s equality.

MR. RUSSERT: Can you be a pro-life, pro-anti-abortion rights feminist?

MS. MICHELMAN: You can be a feminist and oppose the act of abortion on moral and ethical, religious, on personal grounds; absolutely can be. And, in fact, many people who are pro-choice in terms of their beliefs that the policies of this nation should respect the diversity of views on these issues related to pregnancy and childbearing, abortion, and reproductive matters, that there is a diversity of views and they are informed by one’s values, as they are mine. My personal values informed my decision about abortion.

But you can be absolutely anti-abortion, if you will, and pro-choice; believing that women ultimately, not the government, not Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay and Bill Frist, but women themselves must determine the course of their lives, and central to that determining the course of their lives is determining when and under what circumstances they will become mothers. Because the thing that most women want is to be successful at mothering. And the first ingredient is being able to determine when that time is right and not being forced by the government and by politicians or by judges to bear a child under circumstances of one—not of one’s choosing. So I...

MS. O’BEIRNE: Well, as Kate just explained, you cannot believe that there ought to be legal protections for the unborn and not be read out of the modern women’s movement, and this, as I say, is what’s cost them the allegiance of so many women. It’s why abortion rights activists fight so to keep the abortion issue in the courts. While they claim to enjoy broad public support for their agenda, they do not want this issue decided on the democratic process, because that’s when they lose. When Kate complains that since 1995, 400 abortion restrictions have been enacted across the country, when they complain what what they call pro-choice politicians run the White House and Congress, have the majority in Congress, it seems they believe some strange alchemy has delivered these political wins on the part of voters who supposedly support their agenda.

MS. MICHELMAN: Well...

MS. O’BEIRNE: But they haven’t because the democratic process would see the Roe v. Wade abortion on demand for nine months regime quite cut back at the hands of voters.

MS. MICHELMAN: Could I speak to this “abortion on demand”?  I have to comment about this because I hear it over and over and over again. First of all, I ran a Planned Parenthood affiliate for years. I have been with women who have faced the decision about whether or not to have an abortion. I have never heard a woman demand to have an abortion. I think that that language reveals the lack of respect that those who oppose abortion have for women who face crises. We’ve got to get rid of that language.

MS. O’BEIRNE: But we do agree...

MS. MICHELMAN: And Roe does not guarantee women a right to abortion without restrictions. It balanced rights of women to have an abortion in the earlier stages of pregnancy, and allows the states to restrict in the post-viability, roughly last trimester.

MR. RUSSERT: Let me pick up on the political...

MS. MICHELMAN: OK.

MR. RUSSERT: ...atmosphere, because it’s important to our...

MS. MICHELMAN: Yes.

MR. RUSSERT: ...discussion. Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic Party said this recently: “I think we need to talk about abortion differently. ... Republicans have forced us into a corner to defend abortion.”  Then he went on to say: “If I could strike the words ‘choice’ and ‘abortion’ out of the lexicon of our party, I would.”

John Kerry met with supporters after barely losing the 2004 election, and this article from Newsweek: “When Ellen Malcolm, president of the pro-choice political network EMILY’s List, asked about the future direction of the party, [John] Kerry tackled one of the Democrats’ core tenets, abortion rights. He told the group they needed new ways to make people understand they like abortion. Democrats also needed to welcome more pro-life candidates into the party. ‘There was a gasp in the room,’ said Nancy Keenan, the new president of National Abortion Rights Action League Pro-Choice America,’” a group which you headed.

Are the Democrats changing their vocabulary on abortion, because to Kate’s point, the political—the politics are changing?

MS. MICHELMAN: You know, I think those public comments and that public angsting after the 2004 presidential election was unfortunate because the principle that underlies a pro-choice position are the principles of dignity and privacy for women. Abortion rights and reproductive freedom and choice needs to be seen in the larger context of individual liberties, of women determining the course of their lives and having control over their lives. I think that was unfortunate. I’m reminded of the ‘92 election when President Clinton was elected. The House and the Senate were under control of Democrats. The political pundits were writing the obituary of the right wing and the conservative movement, and you didn’t see the conservatives sort of back away from their values or their principles. They didn’t give up and start publicly talking about changing their language.

MS. O’BEIRNE: Tim, they...

MS. MICHELMAN: What they did is they stayed focused on their values and that’s what we need to do.

MS. O’BEIRNE: Tim...

MS. MICHELMAN: And the right to choose is an ex—the right to choose, the right of the individual woman to be guaranteed, to be free from the government and political interference in making this decision is a right that is embraced by the majority of Americans. There may be different views on the individual act of abortion, but in terms of who should make the decision, whether it’s government and politicians or women, there is universal acceptance that women must make...

MR. RUSSERT: But the Democrats want to recapture control of the Congress and the White House.

MS. MICHELMAN: They do, on they can do it on these principles.

MR. RUSSERT: The Democrats have a candidate in Pennsylvania...

MS. MICHELMAN: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: ...Bob Casey...

MS. MICHELMAN: I know him well.

MR. RUSSERT: ...who is a “right-to-life” candidate, quote, unquote...

MS. MICHELMAN: Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT: Because they believe he can win that seat and he is correct on a lot of other “Democratic issues,” quote, unquote. And yet you think it was wrong for the Democrats to gravitate behind someone who may win the seat.

MS. MICHELMAN: Well, you know, to be honest, Tim, what I thought was a problem in that situation was the early intervention of the Democratic Party to select very publicly early in a Democratic primary a candidate in the context of this public angsting about whether the election had to do with abortion or not, which it didn’t—we all know—to publicly endorse a candidate who was opposed to a women’s right to reproductive freedom and choice. Now that was my problem, was the process had not really played out yet, and I just felt that that was not a good thing for the Democratic Party to do.

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