Wyoming can't seem to escape controversy over abortion.

On the heels of the governor's veto of a fetal homicide bill, President Bush's nominee for a federal district judgeship is a former state legislator who once led Wyoming's anti-abortion movement.

Richard Honaker, a Rock Springs attorney, doesn't just oppose abortion rights. He fought doggedly in the 1990s to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

As a state lawmaker in 1991, Honaker unsuccessfully championed the "Human Life Protection Act." At the time, it would have been the most restrictive anti-abortion law in the nation.

After the bill failed, Honaker became the attorney for the Unseen Hands Prayer Circle, a political action committee pushing a anti-abortion initiative. He helped win a Wyoming Supreme Court appeal that put the issue on the ballot. Voters overwhelmingly rejected the measure in 1994.

It seems certain that the new Democratic majority in the U.S. Senate will home in on Honaker's anti-abortion activism - especially since some pro-choice lawmakers are doing everything possible to protect abortion rights in federal courts.

Can a jurist who personally opposes abortion rights put aside his beliefs and be impartial on the bench? The story of Wyoming's most recently appointed federal district judge, William Downes of Casper, suggests that the answer is yes.

But Downes was not on the extreme edge of the issue. Honaker's position, meanwhile, was one of quixotic advocacy.

Downes found himself in the middle of a minor controversy in 1993 when President Clinton named him the successor to U.S. District Judge Ewing T. Kerr. A New York Times editorial noted Downes' opposition to a pro-choice plank in the 1988 state Democratic Party platform.

Oddly, no one on the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Downes a single question about abortion during his public hearing. The Senate confirmed him unanimously.

Downes has performed his job precisely as he promised in 1993, when he said he would "put aside my own personal views and obey and apply the law, including the law protecting women's reproductive choice rights."

Political times have changed, and Honaker can expect tough questioning from the Judiciary Committee. It may be difficult for a majority of senators to be convinced that he can ignore his strong personal convictions about abortion. His qualifications for the job will likely be obscured by his views on abortion rights.

We're certainly not saying a pro-life lawyer shouldn't become a judge. But no matter how you feel about the issue, the right to obtain legal abortions has been the law of the land since 1993. A federal judge swears to uphold all laws.

It is difficult to imagine that President Bush or his advisers on the selection, Wyoming Sens. Craig Thomas and Mike Enzi, could find no worthy nominee in the state whose nomination would be less contentious. Honaker's history on the abortion issue was hardly a secret.

Wyoming does not need to be in the middle of yet another debate over one of the country's most divisive issues - particularly when state legislators and voters long ago decided the issue in Wyoming.