Opening statement - Feinstein

Using MS Word to summarize Feinstein's opening statement:

If you, Judge Roberts, subscribe the Rehnquist court's restrictive interpretation of Congress's ability to legislate, the impact could be enormous. Like any population, women enjoy diverse opinions, beliefs, political affiliations, priorities and values. It actually wasn't until 1839 that a woman could own property separate from her husband, when Mississippi passed the Married Women's Property Act.

The American Bar Association was founded in 1876, but it barred women and did not admit them until 1918. I knew a young woman who killed herself because she was pregnant.

And in the 1960s then, as a member of the California Women's Board of Terms and Parole, when California had what was called the indeterminant sentence law, I actually sentenced women who committed abortions to prison terms. A week ago, I was walking up the Danube River in Budapest when I saw on the shore 60 pair of shoes covered in copper -- women's shoes, men's shoes, small tiny children's shoes.