WASHINGTON — Several pro-life leaders who supported President Bush in 2004 in hopes that he would re-shape the Supreme Court say Harriet Miers’ nomination was a disappointment.

Among the candidates reportedly considered to fill the seat being vacated by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor were unapologetic pro-lifers who hold firm views on the limited role of the judiciary.

Bush's choice of White House counsel Miers came as a surprise. Her nomination was even suggested to Bush by a pro-abortion Democrat, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

In Washington, D.C., the reaction among pro-life Christians was one of shock and betrayal.

“I was willing to swallow hard on John Roberts,” said former presidential candidate and evangelical leader Gary Bauer, an erstwhile ally of Bush's policies. “I'm not willing to do it again. … I don't think godly people or the politicians we support should approach any issue on a stealth basis. That's not a way to touch hearts and minds. What would Lincoln have been if he’d never talked about slavery?”

Miers is a former president of the Texas State Bar who served as Bush's personal attorney before taking on her role in the Bush White House.

Several facts emerged about her personal and professional life that seemed to assuage fears that she may support abortion. Although she's a fallen-away Catholic, she became attracted to Christianity again in her 30s, becoming active in a Texas evangelical church that describes itself as pro-life. In the early 1990s, she opposed the American Bar Association's support of legal abortion.

When she ran for City Council in Dallas, she told a homosexual-rights group that she felt homosexuals should have the “same civil rights” as heterosexuals. But she opposed repealing Texas’ prohibition of sodomy.

Miers used to be a Democrat. When she was, she gave money to Democrats running for office — and nearly all Democrats who run for office are pro abortion. She gave money to Al Gore's presidential campaign in 1988 just after Gore had abandoned his pro-life beliefs and embraced abortion on demand in order to be palatable to Democrats.

Father Thomas Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, was another pro-life leader to criticize the nature of the Miers nomination.

“The nomination of Miers is a slap in the face to pro-life lawyers and judges who have not been ashamed of the principles that inform their conscience,” he said in a prepared statement. “Evidently, courage of conviction disqualifies candidates for the bench.”

Although the ambiguity over Miers’ policy views may protect her nomination from excessive scrutiny by Senate Democrats, it is making Bush's political allies extremely nervous about where she stands. It has already fractured Bush's supporters and cost him political capital at a time when he had very little to begin with. The electoral consequences for the Republican Party in 2006 could be catastrophic, said Bauer.

“I think there are millions of evangelicals and millions of Catholics who may not like Republican economic policy, but who nonetheless see the party as a defender of Judeo-Christian values,” he told the Register. “If those voters decide that even when their party controls the White House, the House and the Senate, it is unwilling to spend political capital on these values issues, then that raises the risk of the whole GOP strategy of becoming the majority party unraveling.”

Sean Rushton, executive director of the pro-life Committee for Justice, took up the defense of Miers. “She seems to be pro-life, and I think that's a positive,” said Rushton. “A number of people who know her well have spoken strongly in her favor.”

Pepperdine Law Professor Douglas Kmiec has been one of Miers’ prominent defenders. Although he acknowledged some of the criticism about Miers’ qualifications and her personal closeness to the president, he praised Bush's choice of someone with extensive experience in litigation and in government work.

“I view her as someone who has a well-developed sense of the judicial role as being limited and restrained, and focused entirely on statutory and constitutional interpretation,” he told the Register. “She has a very healthy sense of the separation of powers, and therefore is a nominee who is not going to be inclined to legislate from the bench or to displace the will of the people when it comes to the right to life.”

Kmiec said that his own conversations with Miers and those around her have commended her well.

“She is very careful, her work is extremely thorough and well considered,” he said, “and if I was looking for a counsel for my own personal interest, Harriet Miers would be on my list.”

Miers’ confirmation is still very likely, but not inevitable. The greatest chance to defeat her will come in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where hearings will begin in early November. If bipartisan opposition materializes, it will focus around the three presidential hopefuls who sit on the panel — Sens. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., Joe Biden, D-Del., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis.

Interviewed Oct. 5 on “Good Morning America,” Brownback said there is “a good chance” he will oppose Miers if she says that Roe v. Wade is “settled law,” already an ambiguous phrase that Roberts used in referring to the decision. If she does not use that phrase, though, Miers could endanger the votes of Democrats on the panel.

David Freddoso writes from Washington, D.C.