The U.S. Senate today approved to a prominent federal court pro-abortion Cornelia Pillard, a law professor President Barack Obama selected for an appointment to the most important appeals court in the nation.
Obama’s pick for the D.C. Circuit Court, who is one of the most pro-abortion ever nominated, previously was a filibuster victim, but that changed when Senate Democrats unilaterally changed the filibuster rules to prevent pro-life Republicans from blocking such judges.
Pillard was confirmed 51-44 to the DC Circuit Court after Senate Republicans had previously defeated her nomination before Reid deployed the Nuclear Option was employed.
All of the 51 votes were from the Democrat caucus, five Senators did not vote (one Democrat and four Republicans). The “No” votes consisted of all Republicans including Susan Collins (ME) and Lisa Murkowski (AK), who are not pro-life.
Three Democrats joined republicans in voting against Pillard — Donnelly (IN), Manchin (WV), and Pryor (AR) .
Pillard has written some pretty outlandish things — and Senate Republicans are hoping circuit court opinions won’t be added to the list.
Among her most shocking statements, Pillard has called the ultrasound “deceptive,” argued that abstinence education is unconstitutional, and suggested that pro-life laws only “enforce women’s incubation of unwanted pregnancies” which projects a “vision of the woman’s role as mothers and caretakers.”
Pillard was voted out of the Senate Judiciary Committee on a straight party line vote of 10-8 with Democrats supporting her nomination and Republicans opposed.
“[Pillard’s] ideology shapes and motivates how she sees both the law and the facts in such cases. It is the essence of judicial activism that a judge’s personal and ideological views drive her legal views,” Senator Orrin hatch, a Utah Republican, said of Pillard.
Pillard was nominated this summer to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing to question Pillard on the many controversial positions she holds on matters of constitutional interpretation. One belief she holds is that there is supposedly a right to an abortion in the Constitution.
Pillard argues that abortion is necessary to help “free women from historically routine conscription into maternity.”
She has written, “Antiabortion laws and other restraints on reproductive freedom not only enforce women’s incubation of unwanted pregnancies, but also prescribe a “vision of the woman’s role” as mother and caretaker of children in a way that is at odds with equal protection. Renewed attacks on abortion have turned attention to how the Equal Protection Clause, and the right to sex equality more generally, might advance reproductive self-determination.”
The Obama judicial nominee also criticizes anyone opposed to the HHS abortion mandate in Obamacare as “reinforce[ing] broader patterns of discrimination against women as a class of presumptive breeders.”
Pillard also thinks abstinence education is unconstitutional.
Pillard’s visceral opposition to abstinence education, coupled with her copious misinformation on the subject, calls into question her fitness for the position. Under the banner of “sex equality” she attempts to make a constitutional argument that abstinence education denies equal protection to female students.
According to Pillard, abstinence education rises to the level of constitutional violation due to the fact that it is “designed not only to expose students to ideas, but also to shape student behavior.”
“The abstinence-only approach is permeated with stereotyped messages and sex-based double standards about acceptable male and female sexual behavior and appropriate social roles. Public school teaching of gender stereotypes violates the constitutional bar against sex stereotyping and is vulnerable to equal protection challenge,” she has written.
Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association says it is difficult to exaggerate the extremist views of Cornelia Pillard and her group is calling on the Senate to reject the nominee.
Huber tells LifeNews that Pillard blatantly distorts the manner in which abstinence programs share information and empower health behaviors and mischaracterizes the approach in her writings.
“Her spurious charge ignores the fact that abstinence education programs seek optimal heath outcomes for all students – male and female. She maligns an approach that explicitly advocates a single sexual standard, prides itself in empowering young men and women, and that promotes health and well being of the individual and society in general,” Huber said. “NAEA urges Congress and common-sense citizens to vigorously oppose a nominee who voices a total disregard for the facts about abstinence education and shows a frightening desire to aggressively use the Constitution to promote her radical ideological views.”
Correction: A previous version of this article indicated Donnelly (IN), Manchin (WV), and Pryor (AR) voted for the Nuclear Option. Manchin and Pryor did not.
