If you suffered through the stultifying, weeklong confirmation hearings, you probably think you know all you can--or ever wanted to--about Samuel Alito. But there's much about the judge's views on issues affecting women that was buried under legal obfuscation and senatorial small talk, starting with his purposely confusing statements on Roe v. Wade. When Senator Dick Durbin asked Alito whether the case that established the constitutional right to abortion in 1973 was the settled law of the land, the judge equivocated. He might have simply taken the path Roberts did in his confirmation hearings, answering with a completely unenforceable "yes." (Clarence Thomas made a similar statement during his confirmation hearings and then went on to vote to overturn Roe.) Instead, tellingly, Alito said he thought the decision could be re-examined.

This should come as no surprise. We already knew from the famous 1985 memo that was part of his application for a job in the Reagan Administration that Alito felt the Constitution didn't protect the right to abortion and that he was "particularly proud" of his work making that point (this on top of the emphatic statement from his 90-year-old mother, Rose, that "of course he's against abortion"). Yet Alito didn't attempt to distance himself from his reputation as an abortion opponent, and in fact stood by his record on the issue. Indeed, the judge said, "I'd be the same sort of Justice on the Supreme Court that I've been a judge on the Court of Appeals." So we know we can look to Casey v. Planned Parenthood, for instance, the much-discussed case he ruled on in 1991, to see what's ahead. That's the decision in which he not only upheld a law requiring doctors to inform women of the potential "medical dangers" of abortion but dissented from the majority by saying that married women should have to notify their husbands before being allowed one.

Alito's less-publicized writings on reproductive issues may be even more revealing. In 1985 he outlined the road map for how to dismantle a woman's right to an abortion piece by piece even if Roe stands, a blueprint that the antichoice movement has followed to dramatic effect. And in the same memo Alito recommended a law that would require doctors to inform "a woman that certain methods of birth control are abortifacients." This line of thinking has become one of the hottest among antichoice activists and--because it would reclassify methods including the IUD, the pill and other hormonal forms of contraception as abortion--severely undercuts Alito's reassurances that he supports the right to birth control. Without these devices, women would be left only with condoms and the rhythm method to prevent pregnancy.

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