Statement by NOW President Toni Van Pelt:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Senate took another step today to aid and abet Donald Trump’s radical anti-abortion agenda by voting to confirm Wendy Vitter to a lifetime position on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana.

Trump doesn’t believe in the separation of powers or care about the rule of law.   He only wants to populate the government and the courts with sycophants and ideologues who will do his bidding, shred the Constitution and reverse decades of protections for women’s health.

Wendy Vitter has been one of the extremist anti-choice lobby’s most vocal and ambitious advocates—seeking to not only repeal Roe v. Wade but to demonize a woman’s fundamental human right to determine her reproductive life.”

While moderating an anti-abortion panel in 2013, Vitter promoted the junk science theory that abortion is linked to breast cancer and oral contraceptives can cause women to be assaulted and murdered.  She spoke at a rally protesting Planned Parenthood and accused the organization of “killing over 150,000 females a year.”

As General Counsel to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans, Wendy Vitter has a long record of extreme hostility to reproductive freedom, and now she will be able to impose that radical agenda on court decisions that will cause irreparable harm to women.

NOW calls on the Senate to take back the blank check it gave to Donald Trump when it comes to judicial nominations, and stop confirming narrow-minded extremists like Wendy Vitter.

Contact

Kimberly Hayes, Press Secretary, press@now.org, 202-570-4745