Reject Souter, Backers of Abortion Rights Say : Supreme Court: Being open-minded on the issue is not enough, they say. But others defend the nominee as a strong supporter of civil liberties.

Abortion rights advocates urged the Senate on Tuesday to reject Supreme Court nominee David H. Souter, arguing that it is not enough for a judge to be open-minded about protecting fundamental constitutional rights.

“I would not want to see him be open-minded about whether I have a right to free speech or whether I have a right to assemble in this room,” Faye Wattleton, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation, told the Senate Judiciary Committee. She said she is equally unwilling to accept a mere open-minded stance regarding her right to choose an abortion.

Picking up the same theme, Kate Michelman, director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, said a Supreme Court nominee who is open-minded about the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling ending segregation would surely be defeated.

The testimony from the two abortion rights leaders highlighted a day in which the committee heard Souter praised as a “strong supporter of civil liberties” and denounced as a “total disaster for civil rights and women’s rights.”

Civil rights groups, including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said Souter was hostile or indifferent to civil rights and should be rejected. But several prominent attorneys, including former U.S. Atty. Gen. Griffin B. Bell and former Virginia Gov. Gerald L. Baliles, said they know Souter to be smart, sensitive and fair.

The committee expects to wrap up its hearings today. A vote on the nomination will probably come during the committee’s next regular meeting Sept. 27.

On Tuesday, as in the earlier hearings, the abortion issue drew the most attention and debate.

During his testimony, Souter said he believes that the Constitution gives married couples a “fundamental right of privacy” in matters involving childbearing, but he refused to say whether he believes that this right remains after a woman becomes pregnant. “I have not made up my mind” on the abortion issue, he told the senators.

The two abortion rights leaders said they found this statement “enormously disturbing” and adequate cause for rejecting his nomination.

“For the first time, we are on the brink of the court taking away a fundamental right,” Michelman said.

But their insistence that Souter support Roe vs. Wade was quickly rebuked by most of the committee members.

“I really believe you are making a big mistake on this,” said Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), who said that he favors abortion rights but that abortion should not be the only issue for considering a Supreme Court nominee.

It is “totally unrealistic,” Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said, to expect that President Bush’s nominee would flatly promise to uphold the right to abortion.

Among the Democrats, Sen. Dennis DeConcini of Arizona said many Americans do not favor an unlimited right to abortion. Nor is the Roe vs. Wade ruling a “settled matter” in the same category as the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that ended legal segregation in the schools, he said.

“If you don’t get Souter, who else are you going to get?” DeConcini asked. “I don’t think he would sit there and lie to us, if his mind was made up” on abortion.

The major anti-abortion groups, such as the National Right to Life Committee, did not testify at the hearings.

On Tuesday, only committee Chairman Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) sounded as if they agreed with Souter’s critics. Several of Souter’s longtime friends and fellow attorneys endorsed him with unabashed enthusiasm.

Former Vermont Atty. Gen. Jerry Diamond, a Democrat, said he had a “drink and a cigar on occasion” with Souter and always found him thoughtful and fair-minded. “I believe there could be no fairer person to sit on the Supreme Court and protect the civil rights of all Americans,” Diamond told the committee.