1st amendment and respect for the text

Titus makes an interesting point. That a justice who ignores the First Amendment would also find in the constitution a right to kill the unborn seems like a logical inference. In both instances, the justice would be ignoring the text of the constitution and substituting his or her own (liberal) policy preferences. So there is perhaps reason to believe that a justice who passes McCain's litmus test on McCain-Feingold (which he denies any intention to use, for what it's worth) would also leave originalists and conservatives out to dry on abortion, same-sex marriage, and other issues.

So is there an actual correlation between a restrictive view of the First Amendment speech clause and an expansive view of the Fourteenth Amendment due process clause, on which the rights of abortion and sodomy are supposed to rest? Actually, yes.

The five justices who upheld portions of McCain-Feingold in McConnell v. F.E.C.: Breyer, Ginsburg, O'Connor, Souter, Stevens. The four who voted against M-F: Rehnquist, Kennedy, Scalia, Thomas.

The four justices who dissented in last term's Gonzales v. Carhart decision, in which the Court upheld the federal partial-birth abortion ban: Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter, Stevens. The five who voted to uphold the ban: Roberts, Alito, Kennedy, Scalia, and Thomas. Substitute Rehnquist for Roberts and the correlation becomes clearer. Note that O'Connor voted in the plurality in Casey v. Planned Parenthood, then substitute O'Connor for Alito, and the correlation is clearer still. (And note how important the Alito confirmation was.)

The correlation is not direct, of course. Kennedy wrote the infamous plurality opinion in Casey and the majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, creating a right to homosexual sodomy. But Kennedy is surely a special case, being as inconsistent as he is in his jurisprudence.