Sounding Less Conservative but Still Noncommittal

Yet he repeatedly brushed aside invitations to say whether overturning Roe -- after being upheld in Casey -- would be too big a jolt.

Specter invoked a change of heart by Roberts's mentor, the late Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, for whom Roberts clerked in the court's 1980-1981 term. He noted that Rehnquist, a life-long critic of the 1966 Miranda decision that recognized a suspect's "right to remain silent" when questioned by police, ultimately voted to uphold it in 2000.

Rehnquist had concluded that Miranda was "embedded" in the "national culture," and Specter asked whether the same could be said for "a woman's right to choose."

Roberts demurred.

"I think that gets to the application of the principles in a particular case," he said. Like previous nominees to the court, Roberts said, he would refuse to say how he would rule.

In the coming term, the high court will hear a challenge to a New Hampshire law that requires teenagers to notify their parents before they can get an abortion. The question for the court is whether Roe and Casey require the state to permit an exception to the law in cases in which a girl's health may be in danger.

Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) seemed pleasantly surprised when Roberts told him that he agrees with a 1965 Supreme Court decision declaring "that there is a fundamental right to privacy as it relates to contraception."

Kohl said he was "delighted" to learn that Roberts had just endorsed an opinion which, Kohl said, leads logically to "a woman's right to choose to terminate her pregnancy," the right recognized in Roe v. Wade .

But, once again, Roberts slipped the punch. "That's an area that I do not feel it appropriate for me to comment on," he said.