Personally, this doesn't bother me. After all, lawyers and lobbyists sometimes represent clients who they disagree with on an issue.

Former Senator Fred D. Thompson, who has positioned himself as an opponent of abortion rights as he prepares to run for president, was hired as a lobbyist 16 years ago by a group on the other side of the issue, according to documents and people involved with his hiring.

The group, the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association, hired Mr. Thompson in 1991, three years before he was elected to the Senate from Tennessee, as part of the group’s effort to overturn a ban on federally financed family planning clinics giving women information about abortion, according to the group’s board minutes and former president. The association’s president at the time, Judith DeSarno, said she was looking for a Republican lobbyist who could help find a compromise at a time when the first President George Bush was opposed to lifting the ban, put in place during the Reagan administration. Mr. Thompson, then a lobbyist at a prominent Washington law firm, fit the bill, she said.

In the group’s board minutes of September 1991, Ms. DeSarno reported hiring Mr. Thompson to “aid us in discussions with the administration.” Ms. DeSarno, who provided the minutes, said in an interview that Mr. Thompson served as the group’s liaison to the White House.

A spokesman for Mr. Thompson said yesterday that Mr. Thompson had “no recollection of doing any work on behalf of this group.”

Key to me is that this appears to be a relatively minor part of Thompson's work, and that the rest of his record is sufficiently pro-life.

And I do want to reemphasize my earlier point -- and illustrate it with an example.

When I was in seminary, one of my professors was a Jesuit whose brother was a lawyer involved in a major criminal case -- he was the lead attorney for Jeffrey Dahmer. Naturally, someone asked this professor (our moral theology prof) how one could morally defend such an individual and try to get them off at trial. his response still resonates with me all these years later -- "You speak truthfully, you protect your client's interests, and you seek an outcome which balances his interests and the interests of justice. But you cannot say that anyone, even someone who has acted as horribly as this man has, is undeserving of a voice to advocate for him in our system."

It strikes me that this is no more than what Thompson may have done.

I do find it interesting, though, that no one else remembers Thompson representing this group.

More at Captain's Quarters

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