It's Roberts

After this morning's fake-out that the president had appointed Edith Brown Clement to the Supreme Court we find out that the real appointment is John G. Roberts, who currently sits on the U.S Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

Here is some of the misinformation we can expect to hear from Washington NARAL, The Stranger, The Seattle Weekly, The Seattle Times, The Seattle PI in the coming months:

• The appointment of Roberts puts abortion rights in Washington at risk.

Fact: By this I suppose they mean that his confirmation to the court would lead to the overturning of Roe v Wade and would in turn make abortion in Washington illegal. First of all, it will take one more pro-Roe judge (Souter, Kennedy, Stevens, Ginsburg) to retire with none of the anti-Roe justices retiring before there would be a chance of overturning Roe. Second of all, overturning Roe v Wade would simply return abortion decision making back to the states where the people could decide how they want to regulate abortion. Third, Washington has repealed all of its pre-Roe statutes. In the event Roe is overturned abortion would remain legal in Washington state through all nine months of pregnancy. This was codified in 1992 through Initiative Measure No. 120.

• An estimated 5,000 to 10,000 women will die annually from illegal abortions if Roe is overturned.

Fact: The number of 5,000 to 10,000 women dying from illegal abortions was first brought into the abortion debate by Bernard Nathanson and the other founders of NARAL to capture the attention and sympathies of the media and enlist their help in the legalization of abortion. He has addmited to this publicly many times. Furthermore there's no documented proof of this claim. In fact, the statistics point to less than 1,000 deaths a year. Even Ellen Goodman of the Boston Globe was forced to recant her use of this number.

Who knows what else they'll come up with.