SUPREME COURT

Sotomayor on Abortion: Unclear

Pro-choice groups worried over lack of paper trail.

It would be a supreme irony if, just as the Republican-appointed David Souter proved a closet liberal, Sonia Sotomayor turned out to be a secret conservative on abortion. But that's the scenario that pro-choice groups are worried about given a lack of representative cases on the issue from Sotomayor's tenure as a federal appeals court judge. In one case, she sided with the Bush administration in denying a claim challenging the "Mexico City rule," which prevented foreign aid from going to organizations abroad that funded abortion. In a letter the president of Naral Pro-Choice America, Nancy Keenan, is pushing senators to dig deeper on the issue in her confirmation hearings. “Discussion about Roe v. Wade will — and must — be part of this nomination process,” Keenan wrote. “As you know, choice hangs in the balance on the Supreme Court as the last two major choice-related cases were decided by a 5-to-4 margin.”