Ashcroft's Record On Key Issues

Here's a look at the position taken by attorney general-designatge John Ashcroft on some key issues as Missouri senator, governor and state attorney general:

ABORTION:
Opposes right to an abortion except to save a woman's life and pushed as senator for constitutional abortion ban. As governor, signed law affirming abortion bans in public medical facilities. Failed in attempt to prohibit women from having more than one abortion in a lifetime, except to protect their health.

GUN CONTROL:
Opposed ban on assault-style weapons and most other federal steps toward tighter gun control.

DEATH PENALTY:
Ashcroft was governor when Missouri resumed carrying out the death penalty in January 1989, and seven men were put to death in his remaining tenure, until January 1993. He never commuted a death sentence.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION:
Opposed laws he says give racial preferences. Co-sponsored 1997 legislation that would have prohibited preferential treatment to anyone on the basis of race or sex in federal contracts, employment or other activities.

Opposed nomination of NAACP lawyer Bill Lann Lee as assistant attorney general for civil rights, largely because Lee supported affirmative action.

HATE CRIMES:
As senator, voted against expanding hate-crimes law to make it easier for federal prosecutors to try such cases. But as governor, signed 1988 law raising penalties for offenses such as assault or vandalism that were motivated by racial or religious bias. Opposed extending hate-crimes protection to homosexuals.

ANTITRUST:
Backed unsuccessful attempt in 1999 to relax antitrust laws by stripping the Federal Communications Commission of merger-oversight powers and shifting them to the Justice Department or Federal Trade Commission.

In antitrust action as Missouri attorney general, sued the National Organization for Women in 1978 for mounting a boycott of Missouri and other states that did not ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. The lawsuit, alleging the boycott violated antitrust laws, failed.

DESEGREGATION:
As attorney general, battled public-school desegregation court orders resulting from years of federal lawsuits. In later years, continued to criticize the "appalling judicial activism" behind the orders. As senator, called federal judges a "robed, contemptuous intellectual elite."

"Over the last half-century, the federal courts have usurped from school boards the power to determine what a child can learn, and removed from the legislatures the ability to establish equality under the law."