Baker Vows Support for Nominee. Foes of Abortion are Upset

WASHINGTON, July 7 – Anti-abortion groups today denounced President Reagan’s decision to nominate Judge Sandra Day O’Connor to the Supreme Court, but initial reaction in the Senate, which will vote on confirmation, was favorable.

”I commend the President for the courage of his decision,” said Howard H. Baker Jr., the Senate Republican majority leader. ”I am delighted with his choice, and I pledge my full support for her confirmation by the full Senate.”

The National Right to Life Committee, an amalgam of anti-abortion lobbying groups in the 50 states, said that it would mobilize its members to ”prevail upon senators to oppose this nomination.” The committee said that Judge O’Connor was ”pro-abortion” as a member of the Arizona State Legislature.

Dr. Carolyn Gerster, a vice president of the National Right to Life Committee, said that the nominee, as a legislator, voted in 1974 not to allow an anti-abortion resolution out of caucus, thus killing it. The resolution asked Congress to pass a Constitutional amendment protecting the fetus except when the mother’s life was in danger, and allowed abortions in the case of rape.

Dr. Gerster based her statement of Judge O’Connor’s record on that and other votes, which were characterized as ”pro-abortion,” on newspaper accounts and the recollections of other legislators, she said. Before 1975, the State Legislature kept no records of committee, subcommittee or caucus votes.

”We feel betrayed by the President,” said Paul Brown