A TARNISHED GARLAND:

Justice Kavanaugh is now in his second term on the Court. Through his first term, he voted with Chief Justice John Roberts 95 percent of the time, and he voted with Justice Stephen Breyer more often than with Gorsuch or Thomas, and voted with ultra-liberals Ginsburg and Sotomayor just as often as he voted with the arch-conservative Thomas. SCOTUS-watchers have noticed the similarity in the judicial ideologies of Roberts and Kavanaugh, referring to Kavanaugh as Roberts's wingman or calling their relationship a "bromance."

And what, exactly, is Kavanaugh's voting record so far? In a word: mixed. Kavanaugh voted with the conservative justices in the case of June Medical Services LLC v. Gee, which would have allowed a new pro-life law in Louisiana (which requires physicians who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at a local hospital) to take effect without a stay during appeal.

However, he sided with the liberal justices in declining to hear the case Andersen v. Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri. The State of Kansas attempted to withdraw public funding from Planned Parenthood on suspicion that they were harvesting organs from aborted babies. Planned Parenthood sued, insisting that they had a constitutional right to taxpayer monies provided by Medicaid.

Apparently, Kavanaugh was so certain that Planned Parenthood was in the right that he refused even to hear the case. "What explains the court's refusal to do its job here?" Justice Thomas asked in his dissent. "I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named 'Planned Parenthood'." Ginsberg and Sotomayor may be expected to take a bullet for the nation's largest abortion provider--but Kavanaugh?

By looking at the small number of Supreme Court decisions during Kavanaugh's first term, one can see that he has landed on both sides of the issue on cases where abortion is involved in some way. In other words, it's by no means clear that he's a reliable conservative even on life issues.

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