MANY PEOPLE who don't like John Kerry but plan to vote for him anyway in November think that he will at least safeguard women's right to abortion. Well, maybe.

Last week, Kerry stabbed his pro-choice supporters in the back, telling a reporter that he would consider appointing anti-choice judges to federal courts--as long as it didn't lead to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. That would mean more federal judges to chip away at abortion rights even if they allow abortion to remain legal--precisely what the courts have done ever since the 1973 Roe decision.

Kerry even bragged that in 1986 he voted in favor of confirming anti-choice Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia--an ultraconservative who once referred to a late-term abortion procedure as "infanticide."

"I will not appoint somebody with a 5-4 court who's about to undo Roe v. Wade," Kerry commented. "I've said that before. But that doesn't mean that if that's not the balance of the court, I wouldn't be prepared ultimately to appoint somebody to some court who has a different point of view."

Despite these outrageous statements, mainstream women's organizations couldn't bring themselves to offer even mild criticism of Kerry. "There's a huge difference between Bush and Kerry on choice, and this is not going to undermine the pages-long documentation that Kerry is pro-choice," said Elizabeth Cavendish, interim president of NARAL Pro-Choice America.

We deserve better than a "maybe" on the question of abortion rights. We deserve abortion rights without apology--something that John Kerry has shown that he won't provide.

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