Solicitor General Elena Kagan, President Barack Obama's nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court, helped craft President Bill Clinton's political strategy for sustaining his veto of the partial-birth abortion ban in 1997. As a result of Clinton's successful veto that year, the ban was not enacted until 2003, when it was signed by President George Bush.

Kagan, who was then deputy director of Clinton's Domestic Policy Council co-wrote a May 13, 1997 memo with Bruce Reed, the director of the council, urging Clinton to support two Democratic amendments that were being offered as substitutes for the partial-birth abortion ban and that were designed to give cover to Democrats who wanted to vote against the ban but be on record as in some way opposing late-term abortions.