WASHINGTON -- While Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr.'s views on abortion have triggered intense debate on Capitol Hill, there was no mistaking where his wife stands: Jane Sullivan Roberts, a lawyer, is ardently against abortion.

Charles Dharapak, Associated Press Jane Roberts, wife of Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr., with son John and daughter Josephine, when President Bush announced Roberts as his choice.

A Catholic like her husband, Jane Roberts has been deeply involved in the anti-abortion movement. She lends her name, money and professional advice to a small Washington-based organization -- Feminists for Life of America Inc. -- that offers counseling and educational programs. The group has filed legal briefs before the Supreme Court challenging the constitutionality of abortion.

A spouse's views normally are not considered relevant in weighing someone's job suitability. But abortion is likely to figure prominently in the Senate debate over Roberts' nomination.

And with his position on the divisive issue unclear, abortion-rights supporters have expressed concern that his wife's views might suggest that he also embraces efforts to overturn Roe v. Wade.

"It's unclear how all this will affect her husband," said Jennifer Palmieri, a spokeswoman with the Center for American Progress, a liberal public policy group. "It's possible that he would have a different view than her. It's just that in the absence of information about this guy, people are looking at her and trying to read the tea leaves."

Asked to discuss her role with Feminists for Life, Jane Roberts said in an e-mail to the Los Angeles Times: "Thanks for your inquiry. At this time, however, I would like to decline your invitation to talk."

Advocacy groups on both sides of the issue were reacting strongly to President Bush's first Supreme Court nomination.

The anti-abortion group Operation Rescue said: "We pray that Judge Roberts will be swiftly confirmed."

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women, warned that of the Supreme Court candidates considered by Bush, Roberts was one of the "most extreme" when it comes to the question of overturning the Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion.

Feminists for Life has sponsored a national advertising campaign aimed at ending abortion in America. One of its mission statements proclaims: "Abortion is a reflection that we have not met the needs of women. Women deserve better than abortion."

Jane Roberts was a volunteer on Feminists for Life's board of directors from 1995 to 1999. She has provided legal assistance to the group, and been recognized as a contributor who donated from $1,000 to $,2,500.

Sherrin Foster, president of the organization, said Roberts maintains her ties by giving the group legal advice on how to draw up incorporation and not-for-profit papers.

Foster said that while she has met John Roberts, who now sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the judge has not been involved her group.

In 1990, working as the principal deputy Solicitor General in the first Bush administration, which opposed legalized abortion, Roberts wrote a legal brief for the Supreme Court in a case regarding federal funding to abortion doctors and clinics.

"We continue to believe," Roberts wrote, "that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be overruled." The brief went on to say, "The [Supreme] Court's conclusion in Roe that there is a fundamental right to an abortion ... finds no support in the text, structure or history of the Constitution."

But during the 2003 Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination for the appeals court, where he would obliged to apply Supreme Court precedents, Roberts told lawmakers, "Roe v. Wade is the settled law of the land... There's nothing in my personal views that would prevent me from fully and faithfully applying that precedent."