ice President Al Gore has used the name of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as a truncheon against Governor George W. Bush, suggesting that Bush's praise for Scalia is evidence that Bush would appoint justices who share Scalia's disdain for Roe v. Wade, which protects a woman's right to abortion.
But Scalia's contempt for the 1973 decision, and for affirmative action programs as well, was well-known in 1986 when President Reagan nominated Scalia, then a judge on the US Court of Appeals, to the high court.
The Senate, Gore included, voted 98-0 to confirm him.
Bush, in the past, has spoken glowingly of both Scalia and Justice Clarence Thomas, who are widely seen as the most conservative members of the court, and the two most certain votes to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision.
Gore has sought to use the issue against Bush. ''And when the names Scalia and Thomas are used as benchmarks for who would be appointed, those are code words - and nobody should mistake this - for saying that the governor would appoint people who would overturn Roe v. Wade,'' Gore declared during the first presidential debate.
Gore, an abortion opponent for much of the 1980s, supported abortion rights by the time he first ran for president, in 1988. In 1991, he voted against the confirmation of Thomas after allegations that Thomas sexually harassed Anita Hill.
WALTER V. ROBINSON
