Senate GOP Considers Filibuster of Obama Judicial Nominee Who Compared Pregnancy to Slavery
President Obama’s nominee to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel once compared “forced pregnancy” with slavery. Now Republicans are considering a filibuster to block her confirmation.
The controversy stems from comments made 20 years ago by Dawn Johnsen, a law professor at Indiana University, whose nomination is pending before the full Senate.
In a brief filed when she was a lawyer with the National Abortion Rights Action League, Johnsen cited a footnote that said forcing women to bear children was “disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the 13th Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state’s asserted interest.”
At least 45 House Republicans have co-signed a letter to Obama asking him to withdraw Johnsen’s nomination because of her “brazen” abortion rights stance.
NARAL said this week it is mobilizing its nationwide network of activists and supporters to pressure the Senate to confirm Johnsen and two other Obama nominees — Judge David Hamilton and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius — and stop what it deems attacks on nominees who support abortion rights. Filibusters won’t be tolerated, the group said.
“The use of the ‘F’ word when referring to any of these nominees is unacceptable — and this threat will not go unanswered,” NARAL president Nancy Keenan said in a press release
But during the Bush Administration, how many appointees were filibusterd? How hypocritical can they be?
This party is so out of wack, it is just scarry.
