Senate Democrats advance nomination of pro-abortion 'zealot' to serve as federal judge — with the help of Republicans Collins and Murkowski
The U.S. Senate advanced the nomination of Center for Reproductive Rights lawyer Julie Rikelman to be a U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the First Circuit Thursday with a 53-45 vote invoking cloture.
Democrats were aided by pro-abortion Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who similarly voted to end the debate and preclude the possibility of filibuster as it pertains to Rikelman's nomination to the Boston-based court.
Republican Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee did not vote.
The Senate is expected to proceed to a roll-call vote on Rikelman's confirmation on June 20. Democrats are sure to have the 60 votes required, especially with Sens. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and John Fetterman (D-Pa.) likely to be physically present.
Conservatives, such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), have expressed concerns in recent months that Rikelman, who served for nearly a decade as senior litigation director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, a pro-abortion advocacy organization, was nominated by President Joe Biden as part of a broader effort to "fundamentally change our judiciary."
Cruz told Rikelman in September 2022, one month after her nomination, that her career embodies "precisely this pattern," having spent the majority of her professional life as "an extreme zealot advocating for abortion."
TheBlaze reported that Rikelman regards abortion as a right.
Rikelman, who long worked as vice president of litigation for NBC Universal, suggested in a December 2021 Salon interview that academic, financial, and professional gains enjoyed by women were made possible by abortion, indicating that one of her biggest goals was "to make sure that the voices of women were heard at the court and were present in the courtroom ... to make sure that the impact of taking this right away, something the court hast [sic] never done ... would be felt."
Prior to the Supreme Court's 2022 Dobbs ruling, the 51-year-old Ukrainian native recommended "expanding access to abortion," stating that the "status quo is not good enough" and that she was committed to the "battle against outright bans on abortion."
Extra to celebrating abortion, Rikelman has lashed out against the pro-life movement, calling pregnancy resource centers "faux clinics."
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, noted Tuesday that "Rikelman's career of representing abortionists in court and leading a U.S. litigation team for a pro-abortion organization makes her incapable of acting as an impartial jurist and therefore, unfit for a seat on the federal bench."
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, wrote in February, "Pro-abortion litigation makes up the singular focus of her legal experience over the last decade and renders her unfit to serve as an impartial judge on the First Circuit. Rikelman's career has been strictly centered around the radical, pro-abortion agenda for over two decades."
While Rikelman has suggested she would keep her pro-abortion advocacy and her prospective role as judge separate, leftist outfits may be under a different impression.
After all, the following are some of the radical groups that have expressed their "enthusiastic support" for her nomination: Gender Justice; NARAL Pro-Choice America; National Abortion Federation; Planned Parenthood Federation of America; Physicians for Reproductive Health; Pro-Choice North Carolina; Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice; Reproaction; Reproductive Equity Now; and another radical pro-abortion group that seeks to undermine parental rights, Unite for Reproductive and Gender Equity.
If the Senate confirms the nomination, Rikelman will serve as a federal judge for life.
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Post-Dobbs, The Abortion Battle Hits Activist State Courts
Abortion extremists have been working for years to ensure that if Roe and Casey were overturned, abortion-on-demand would remain the law of the land.Pro-abortion activists and abortion providers sue to block Texas heartbeat law
Pro-abortion activists and abortion providers filed a federal lawsuit against the state of Texas Tuesday in an attempt to block a pro-life law that bans abortions after a preborn baby's heartbeat can be detected and allows citizens to enforce the law with lawsuits.
The Center for Reproductive Rights, an abortion rights group, partnered with Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Texas, and various abortion providers, including Whole Women's Health, as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which seeks to block the Texas heartbeat law from taking effect on Sept. 1.
"If this oppressive law takes effect, it will decimate abortion access in Texas–and that's exactly what it is designed to do," said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights. "The state has put a bounty on the head of any person or entity who so much as gives a patient money for an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, before most people know they are pregnant. Worse, it will intimidate loved ones from providing support for fear of being sued. And this is happening to Texans as we are fighting another direct challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court, out of Mississippi. We will pursue every legal avenue we can to block this and other pernicious laws."
Texas' heartbeat law requires abortionists to check for a baby's heartbeat and makes it illegal to kill that baby if a heartbeat can be heard. The enforcement mechanism of the law is unique — it empowers "any person," with exceptions for sexual abusers, to sue anyone who "aids or abets" an illegal abortion for up to $10,000 per defendant.
The language of the law means that organizations that provide support to women seeking an abortion, not just direct abortion providers, could be the target of citizen lawsuits by pro-life activists.
"This radical law will isolate people seeking to exercise their constitutional right to abortion care by targeting their entire support network and discouraging their loved ones from providing help and support for fear of being sued," said Marc Hearron, senior counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. "This is just the latest attempt by Texas politicians to ban abortion, but this time they've gone to a new extreme."
Abortion rights groups say the overwhelming volume of lawsuits they could receive under the law would prevent them from providing their services and could potentially cause them to shut down.
The lawsuit against Texas claims the heartbeat law violates a woman's supposed constitutional right to kill her preborn child. It also alleges that the law's enforcement mechanism is designed to make it difficult for courts to stop. Texas has "created an enforcement scheme of private lawsuits brought by the general public in an attempt to evade all legal accountability and prevent the federal courts from blocking this unconstitutional ban before it takes effect," the Center for Reproductive Rights said.
"Approximately 85-90% of people who obtain abortions in Texas are at least six weeks into pregnancy, meaning this law would prohibit nearly all abortions in the state," the organization noted. It also claims that "people living on a low income and people of color will be harmed the most by this ban" because only women with enough means to travel out of state will be able to seek abortions.
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