WASHINGTON (April 13, 2005)-- Millions of postcards are on their way to the district offices of U.S. Senators coast to coast as part of the "End the Roe Litmus Test" campaign. The campaign, sponsored by the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment and the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), invites Catholics to send a message to their Senators that support for Roe v. Wade should not be used as a litmus test for judicial nominees.

"Abortion advocacy groups have pledged to spend $10 million dollars every year to see that only judges who promise to endorse Roe are confirmed," said Cathy Cleaver Ruse, Esq., Director of Planning and Information for the USCCB Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities. "Yet even legal scholars who favor legal abortion have said Roe is not good constitutional law."

In January Cardinal William Keeler wrote to all U.S. Senators urging them not to use a pro-abortion litmus test for nominees. "By any measure," he said, "support for the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision is an impoverished standard for assessing judicial ability." Cardinal Keeler is Chairman of the USCCB's Committee for Pro-Life Activities. The End the Roe Litmus Test campaign also includes an e-mail component.

"Roe v. Wade is bad law, bad medicine, and bad social policy," said Ruse. "No Senator should make a litmus test out of what Justice Blackmun's former law clerk Edward Lazarus calls 'one of the most intellectually suspect constitutional decisions of the modern era'."

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