Pro-lifers on the watch for evidence of John Roberts position on abortion may be interested in reading the context of his statement that abortion is a “tragedy,” from yesterday’s Washington Post:

In 1985, Philip Dreisbach, an official of the California Pro-Life Medical Association, asked Reagan to send a telegram of support that could be read at a memorial service the group was holding for 16,500 aborted fetuses found in plastic barrels stored behind the home of a pathology-lab director.
Roberts told Fielding on Oct. 4 that he had “no objections to the President sending a message to the memorial service. The President’s position is that the fetuses were human beings, or (at) least cannot be proven not to have been, and accordingly a memorial service would seem an entirely appropriate means of calling attention to the abortion tragedy. My concern is sending another message to Dreisbach, who was prepared to misuse the previous Presidential message on a gruesome anti-abortion display. I recommend approving the telegram, but making certain the recipients understand it cannot be used in any future materials.”

My thought is that Roberts did not have to call abortion a “tragedy”… that this was potentially subjective opinion.