Bronx Irish Girl ‘Courts’ Controversy

By Tom Deignan

Back in the early 1970s, when Jane Sullivan was a student at St. Catherine’s Academy off Pelham Parkway in the Morris Park section of the Bronx, Irish and Italian names still dominated the attendance lists.

Of course, neighborhoods change. Now, the names of Hispanic and Central American immigrants are not uncommon at St. Catherine’s, or throughout the parish of Our Lady of Solace, where young Jane Sullivan worshipped.

Sullivan is in the headlines these days as the wife of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. Her devout Catholic faith is garnering most of the attention, but most people have chosen to overlook her extensive Irish background.

Sullivan went on to become a highly successful lawyer and marry fellow lawyer Roberts.

Democrats and others were expecting Bush to nominate a more controversial figure. Then a brutal confirmation battle was supposed to follow, heating up the nation’s capital during the summer, a time of the year typically seen as quite boring.

But the fact of the matter is that there does not yet seem to be much to say about Roberts. Sure, there are some who feel that Roberts opposes abortion, and that seems to be the hottest of all hot button issues when it comes to the Supreme Court.

In recent years the court has very narrowly upheld a woman’s right to an abortion, and the feeling is that just one more anti-abortion judge could tip the scales the other way.

But even Democrats seem to say that Roberts is a smart, likable guy, and the conventional wisdom seemed to be that he was going to easily become the next member of the High Court, replacing the retiring Sandra Day O’Connor.

But then came revelations that the Bronx Irish girl who Roberts married was an anti-abortion activist. Interestingly, she was also a proud feminist.

That might seem like a contradiction. But then again, it’s always been difficult to say that traditional and devout Irish Catholics are either liberal or conservative.

That definitely seems to be the case with Jane Sullivan, who served on the board of a group called Feminists for Life. The group attempts to do the seemingly impossible — bring together the fight for women’s rights while also opposing abortion.

“Abortion is a reflection that our society has failed to meet the needs of women,” is one motto Feminists for Life has used. “Women deserve better than abortion.”

As the New York Times put it in a recent profile, Jane Sullivan’s “Catholic faith has long played a central role in her life.”

She was one of four children, the oldest, and the daughter of a technician for the U.S. Postal Service whose mother worked as a medical secretary.

The Sullivans’ ties to Ireland were so strong, in fact, that the family

purchased a home in Knocklong, Co. Limerick, where members of the extended Sullivan clan try to meet at least every two years.

The Times continued, “After graduating from St. Catherine’s Academy, an all-girls’ high school in the Bronx, Mrs. Roberts joined the first class of women to enter the College of the Holy Cross, in Worcester, Massachusetts, where she attended Mass several times a week, tutored football players in mathematics, her major, and carved a path as a student leader.

“A budding feminist even with her traditionalist streak, she was one of four students who represented the student body in a heated dispute when the feminist scholar Marilyn French, who taught at the college from 1972 to 1976, was denied tenure.”

Sullivan married Roberts in 1996 and they have since adopted two children.

Will Sullivan’s devoutly Catholic views affect her husband’s confirmation? For now, politicians on both sides of the aisle are saying they won’t.

Even liberal stalwart (and Sullivan’s fellow Irish American) Senator Ted Kennedy was quoted on Tuesday as saying that Sullivan as well as her own legal work should have nothing to do with Roberts.

“I think (she) ought to be out of bounds,” Kennedy said to reporters last week.

Meanwhile, Republican Senator Rick Santorum told NBC’s Today show, “I don’t think your wife’s activities should have any impact on what a judge is going to do.”

Sounds good. But then again, this is Washington we are talking about. Stay tuned.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)