WASHINGTON - February 20 - Statement of NARAL Pro-Choice America President Kate Michelman

Thumbing his nose at the Senate for the second time in recent weeks, President Bush today appointed one of the most virulently anti-choice and anti-privacy judicial activists to the Eleventh Circuit federal bench, Bill Pryor. This appointment comes just a month after Bush’s Martin Luther King Day surprise with the appointment of anti-choice Charles Pickering to the Fifth Circuit bench.

Mr. Pryor has called Roe v. Wade an “abominable decision.” The truly abominable decision is to give this hardened crusader against a woman’s right to choose a seat on the federal bench. This outrageous appointment puts a judge who opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest in a frightening position of power over women’s lives in Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

President Bush has shown that he will go to any length, violate any rule, and upset any precedent to pack the courts with anti-choice extremists.

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