Supreme Court nominee Ruth Bader Ginsburg gave clear support to abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment, hinted at backing gay rights but remained closed on most other issues as her confirmation hearings continued Thursday.
Republicans say while such stands concern them, they at least take solace that Ginsburg's pledges to make any changes in law by small steps upset liberals who want bold changes."I strongly disagree with her views (on abortion and the ERA)," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told the Deseret News Thursday. "But everyone the president considered had the same views. We can't politicize this process by having a special litmus test on any topic."
Hatch, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, added, "They (liberals) must be dismayed at her incremental approach to the law. And she is very good on antitrust law, business law . . . and is honest, decent and of high integrity."
When questioned about abortion rights Wednesday, Ginsburg said, "This is something central to a woman's life, her dignity."
She added, "It's a decision that she must make for herself. And when government controls that decision for her, she's being treated as less than an adult fully responsible for her own choices."
When asked about a father's rights in an abortion decision, she said, "It's her body and her life, and men, to that extent, are not similarly situated. They don't bear the child."
On the ERA, she said that even though court interpretation of the 14th Amendment has given equal protection under law to women, the ERA is still needed at least symbolically to further women's rights.
"I remain an advocate of the Equal Rights Amendment because I have a daughter and a granddaughter," Ginsburg said. "We know what history was, and we want to make a clarion call that men and women are equal before the law."
Ginsburg said she chose to make clear statements on those issues because she had ruled on them as a judge or wrote at length about them as a legal scholar and a lawyer who pursued equal rights cases for women.
Another area where Ginsburg was drawn out a bit Thursday was on homosexual rights. She told Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., "I think rank discrimination against anyone is against the tradition of the United States and is to be deplored."
"This country is great because of its accommodations with diversity," she added. "The richness of the diversity of this country is a treasure and it's a constant challenge to remain tolerant and respectful of one another."
But she refused to be drawn out on most other issues, such as the death penalty. Hatch tried at length to pin her down on that Thursday, complaining she should give a clear stance on it since she gave such stands on abortion and the ERA - and he noted recent Republican nominees gave their stands on the issue.
But the closest he could get from her was, "I do not have a closed mind on this subject."
She also said she had never ruled or lectured on the death penalty, and did not want to pre-judge the issue, which surely would come to her.
Hatch found himself attacked Thursday for supposedly being insensitive to blacks while questioning Ginsburg.
He used the pro-slavery Dred Scott decision as an example of what he said was a bad decision resulting from judicial activism, and said that was similar to what he thought happened in the pro-abortion Roe vs. Wade case.
Sen. Carol Moseley-Braun, D-Ill., an African American, interrupted and said that "as the only descendent of slaves on this committee" she found the line of questioning even "analogizing Dred Scott with Roe vs. Wade offensive," and asked Hatch to stop.
Hatch said he was not defending the Dred Scott decision but attacking it, and said it was a warning that justices should not legislate from the bench but base their decisions on existing law and the Constitution.