WILL AMERICAN WOMEN REJECT TRUMP’S SCOTUS NOMINEE ?

 

                                                 …Judge Amy Coney Barrett

 

This new SCOTUS nominee could personally remove health care from millions of Americans

 

I have found that I enjoy looking into the legal background of the different individuals that have been nominated for the high courts, especially, the Supreme Court.

I was also very interested in who Donald Trump would nominate as a woman justice, since he has shown how he doesn’t really respect any woman.

When I looked into Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, it was obvious just how conservative the court would become, and I, along with many had hoped that the Notorious RBG would live as long as a Democratic president would take over the White House.  Unfortunately, as much adoration has been shown to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, her nominated replacement will never be able to replace a giant like the 5’ 1´ Ms. Ginsburg.

Now, with the Trump nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, the court could be in serious peril for America’s liberals for many years.  I have been very interested in the choice of Judge Barrett because of her obvious attitude toward health care and abortion.  Ms. Barrett currently has seven children, ages 7 to 16, and her attitude toward abortion, birth control and even the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) are very well known as I will state below.

With a quick Senate confirmation, Judge Barrett could be on the bench when the court plans to hear California v. Texas, a lawsuit calling on the justices to wipe the Affordable Care Act off the books.

Although Ms. Barrett hasn’t said a lot about the health care law, her one major comment came in a 2017 law review article.  In the article she said the previous decision by Chief Roberts upholding the law “pushed the Affordable Care Act beyond its plausible meaning, just to save the statute.”

In the same article, Barrett criticized another ruling upholding the health care law on the grounds that, once again, Roberts misinterpreted the law in order to prop it up.  In 2012, Barnett signed a petition protesting a provision of the Affordable Care Act guaranteeing coverage of birth control.  She argued that it violated religious liberty.

Roberts’s 2012 decision to uphold the law surprised many analysts, given his conservative credentials and his past role as an official in Republican administrations. One popular theory is that he must have thought overturning a program that mattered to so many people, and invalidating the signature achievement of a Democratic president would provoke a political backlash to the court and, perhaps, the Republican Party.

The Affordable Care Act has become more popular over time.  Democrats and their supporters are furious at Republicans for blocking Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in his final year in office, and, perhaps most important, as millions of America’s population now have a direct stake in this health care law.

There are also the millions who get subsidized private insurance through the insurance exchanges, plus the millions of Americans on expanded Medicaid and then all the millions with preexisting conditions who have guarantees of coverage they would not have without the current law. 

Now, as to Ms. Barrett’s attitude toward abortion, and the right for a woman to choose, that’s a different story.

Amy Coney Barrett, meets the president's unprecedented anti-abortion rights litmus test. The federal judge has referred to abortion as "always immoral".  She has a clear anti-abortion rights judicial record. During her three years on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, she has already ruled on two abortion-related cases, both times favoring restrictions on any access to abortion.

"She is the perfect combination of brilliant jurist and a woman who brings the argument to the court that is potentially the contrary to the views of sitting women justices," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, an anti-abortion rights political group.  This was her statement to CBS News.

Many believe that overturning Roe v. Wade,  the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion nationwide, is no longer a hypothetical idea. The vacancy on the court following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was not only liberal but an unequivocal supporter of abortion rights. Though Mr. Trump's two Supreme Court nominations, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, have been against abortion rights, but both replaced conservative justices, that left the balance of the court nearly untouched until now.

Though Chief Justice Roberts has joined the liberal bloc before, his separate opinion has been used by federal appeals courts to uphold other abortion restrictions.  Today, 17 cases related to abortion are one step away from the Supreme Court and three, including a 15-week abortion ban from Mississippi, could be taken up as early as its next session. Dozens more, including the handful of last year's six-week abortion bans, are making their way through the judicial system.

In Box v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc., Barrett joined dissenters arguing in favor of an Indiana law that would have required doctors to notify the parents of a minor seeking an abortion.  Unlike parental notification laws in other states, Indiana's didn't include a judicial bypass provision.  That is an exception to the law for minors able to prove to a judge they have the maturity to make the decision of their own and that notifying their parents would not be in their best interest.

Barrett also joined dissenters in another abortion case from Indiana, Commissioner of the Indiana State Department of Health v. Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky Inc. Barrett favored a rehearing of two state laws: one that regulated the fetal remains from abortion procedures and another that would have banned abortions for reasons related to sex, race or disability, including life-threatening conditions.

The point here is that with this justice, a woman’s right to choose would probably be in the toilet for decades and scores of illegal abortions would again be the issue in America, especially in rural areas..

Copyright G. Ater 2020