Justice Clarence Thomas Tells 60 Minutes That Abortion Was Real Issue at His Confirmation Hearings

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas gives his first TV interview to Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes:

(CBS) In his first television interview, in which he discusses his childhood, his race, his rise to Supreme Court Justice and his job on the nation's highest court, Clarence Thomas says the real issue at his controversial confirmation hearings 16 years ago was abortion.

Saying the issue was "the elephant in the room," Thomas also tells 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft that the hearings he called at the time a "high-tech lynching" harmed the country.

Kroft's interview will be broadcast on Sunday, Sept. 30, at 7:30 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. PT.

Thomas, whose Supreme Court positions on abortion issues have been conservative, says the confirmation hearings in which he was accused of sexual harassment by a former employee -- allegations he continues to deny -- were really about abortion. "That was the elephant in the room ... That was the issue. That is the issue that people are apparently so upset about," he tells Kroft. "[That is the issue] that you determine the composition of your Supreme Court and your entire federal judiciary, it seems now," says Thomas.

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My Comments:
This is nothing groundbreaking. Those of us paying attention back in 1991 knew at the time that the left trumped up the Anita Hill thing in order to derail the confirmation of someone they saw as a threat to Roe v. Wade.

But that wasn't the whole story. In addition to the perceived threat to abortion, as well as the fact that Hill's charges neatly dovetailed with the Tailhook Scandal (providing the Democtats with a convenient platform for launching their "Year of the Woman" nonsense in time for the 1992 elections), the left was also especially traumatized that the "wrong kind" of black man was being nominated to replace the liberal icon Thurgood Marshall.

We saw the same thing when Miguel Estrada was nominated to be a federal appellate judge a few years ago, and the Democrats fought tooth and nail to kill the nomination (without, of course, ever bringing it up for a vote). The leftists knew that Estrada's nomination was merely a stepping stone to the Supreme Court, and they weren't about to sit back while someone who might turn out to be a Latino version of Clarence Thomas was being groomed for the role.

Yes, abortion was (and continues to be) the primary motivator for the left when it comes to the Supreme Court. But do not underestimate the significance of the fact that the only sort of person the leftists hate more than conservatives is an "uppity" minority who doesn't "know his place" by daring to stray from the plantation of liberal orthodoxy.



Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
The Supreme Court’s Most Interesting Catholic

Defending Justice Thomas

Reading the Constitution Right: The Jurisprudence of Justice Clarence Thomas