CNSNews.com’s coverage of the Brett Kavanaugh saga was already wildly biased, but we’re not quite sure what to make of this.
An Oct. 7 article, anonymously written and credited only to “CNSNews.com Staff” and headlined “Sen. Susan Collins Explains Why She Doesn’t Believe Kavanaugh Will Vote to Overturn Roe v. Wade,” featured how Republican senator Collins — one of the swing votes who eventually voted for Kavanaugh’s confirmation — “explained why she did not believe Kavanaugh would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade”:
She suggested, instead, that he would be like Justices Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter—all of whom, she noted, were appointed by Republican presidents at a time when the Republican platform called for overturning Roe.
All joined in the Supreme Court’s 1992 opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey opinion that upheld Roe.
Most notably, Collins said in her explanation of why she was not worried that Kavanaugh would overturn Roe that Kavanaugh had told her when they were discussing his nomination that he did not think five sitting justices—a majority of the nine member court—would be a sufficient number “to overturn long-established precedent.”
This was after he had testified, she noted, that Roe–upheld by Casey–was “precedent on precedent.”
That kind of article is par for the course for the rabidly anti-abortion CNS. They want Roe v. Wade overturned, which was the point of its pro-Kavanaugh “news” coverage, and they’re perhaps a little annoyed at the idea of precedent.
The next day, Susan Jones wrote an article that covered the same exact territory under the very similar headline “Collins: ‘I Do Not Believe That Brett Kavanaugh Will Overturn Roe v. Wade'”:
How can you be 100 percent sure that Justice Brett Kavanaugh will not overturn Roe v. Wade? CNN’s Dana Bash asked Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Sunday’s “State of the Union.”
“I do not believe that Brett Kavanaugh will overturn Roe v. Wade,” Collins said, noting that precedents are not often overturned.
“And listen to the standards that he put forth, again, in his conversations with me and also in the hearing. He says, for a precedent, among established precedents like Roe, to be overturned, it would have to have been grievously wrong and deeply inconsistent. He noted that Roe had been reaffirmed 19 years later by Planned Parenthood vs. Casey and that it was ‘precedent on precedent’. He said it should be extremely rare that it’d be overturned.”
“You have obviously full confidence?” Bash asked Collins.
“I do,” Collins replied.
Jones did offer a little more context for CNS’ weird concern: “Collins cast one of the deciding votes in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation on Sunday, despite her support for abortion. Bash noted that Planned Parenthood gave Collins an award last year for her work on protecting reproductive rights.”
Jones’ article got the lead slot on CNS’ front page that day, despite it effectively being a rewrite.
UPDATE: Jones also lazily and uncritically repeated Collins’ incorrect assertion that “Planned Parenthood opposed three pro-choice justices just because they were nominated by Republican presidents — David Souter, Sandra Day O’Connor and Justice Kennedy.” In fact, while Planned Parenthood opposed Souter — because he didn’t make his position on abortion clear during the confirmation hearings, not because he was nominated by a Republican president — it actually endorsed O’Connor but took no position on Kennedy.