Elena Kagan Abortion Memo Offers New Look at Nominee

WASHINGTON, May 11, 2010— -- Opponents of Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court have repeatedly said Kagan has a thin paper trail reflecting her views on important hot button issues coming before the Court. But the puacity of public documentation about Kagan could soon change.

In a few weeks, the William J. Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, will release thousands of documents pertaining to Kagan, including memos she wrote when working in the Clinton administration beginning in 1995. The memos might reflect advice she gave as an attorney in the White House Counsel's office and later the Office of Domestic Policy.

One memo that has already emerged shows the behind-the-scenes work Kagan did on the issue of abortion. The memo was first reported by the Associated Press.

View a full copy of the original Kagan memo obtained by ABC News HERE.

In 1997, Kagan and Bruce Reed, her boss at the Office of Domestic Policy, urged President Clinton to support a Democratic proposal to prohibit abortions late in pregnancy when a fetus might be viable, even though some abortion-rights groups opposed the proposal. In a memo, Reed and Kagan lay out a raging debate that was occurring in Washington at the time.

For months, President Clinton had said that he opposed late-term abortions except in cases when it was necessary to save the life of the mother or prevent serious harm to her health. Republicans were trying to push through the Partial Birth Abortion Act, which contained an exception for the life of the mother, but no exception for her health.

Senator Tom Daschle came up with a substitute amendment. It would ban so-called partial birth abortions, but it contained a broader health exception. The memo quotes the Daschle language: "It exempts an abortion when the physician 'certified that continuation of the pregnancy would…risk grievous injury to [the mother's] physical health.' "