Courts

Senate Officially Confirms Wendy Vitter

Speaking of the systematic destruction of women's rights

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The Republican-controlled United States Senate officially confirmed Wendy Vitter for a seat on the District Court in New Orleans.

Vitter, who can’t fix her mouth to say that desegregation was good law, was nominated before the midterms. But she couldn’t get confirmed by the narrow Republican majority. She was renominated this terms and a strengthen Republican Senate pushed her through, 52 -45, over the opposition of every Democrat and Susan Collins.

The Republican assault against Roe v. Wade and women’s rights continues apace, but Vitter is a special kind of retrograde. It’s no longer enough for conservatives to believe that the penumbra of privacy rights extends to a woman’s womb. Now conservatives are required to harbor unhinged theories about abortion and be willing to attack the very notion of autonomous control of one’s body.

Vitter fits modern conservatives perfectly. Bess Levin explains:

Vitter, who has been general counsel for the Archdiocese of New Orleans since 2012, seemingly believes that abortion causes breast cancer. At a conference in 2013, Vitter referred to a brochure that linked abortions to breast cancer, and told the audience, “Go to Dr. Angela’s Web site, Breast Cancer Prevention Institute, download it, and, at your next physical, you walk into your pro-life doctor and say, ‘Have you thought about putting these facts or this brochure in your waiting room?’ Each one of you can be the pro-life advocate to take that next step. That’s what you do with it.” That same brochure that Vitter appeared to endorse claimed that taking birth control can lead to cervical and liver cancers, and “violent death,” because “women who take oral contraceptives prefer men with similar DNA, and that women in these partnerships have fewer sexual relations, leading to more adultery, and ‘understandably . . . violence.’” Separately, Vitter appeared at an anti-Planned Parenthood rally, where she accused the group of “kill[ing] over 150,000 females a year.” Naturally, she left these activities off her disclosure form to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

To be clear, everything Wendy Vitter thinks about this issue is wrong, stupid, and dangerous. Everybody who voted for a Republican Senator is complicit in this violent imbecility.

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TRUMP JUDGE WHO ENDORSED THEORY ABORTION CAUSES CANCER CONFIRMED BY SENATE [Vanity Fair]

Elie Mystal is the Executive Editor of Above the Law and a contributor at The Nation. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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