January 29, 2002
The Honorable Mary Landrieu
724 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Landrieu:
I write to you to oppose the nomination of Judge Charles W. Pickering, Sr. to the United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. Throughout his career, Judge Pickering has demonstrated his strong and outright hostility to Roe v. Wade's protections for women to make decisions about their private lives without government intervention. Confirming Judge Pickering to the Fifth Circuit would further jeopardize the ability of women and their families in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, and around the nation, to make their own private, personal reproductive health care decisions.
For more than 20 years, I have been an administrator of the Hope Medical Group for Women in Shreveport, Louisiana. My clinic provides women from Louisiana and other states with access to safe and confidential abortion services. In 1980, on the first day Hope Medical Group for Women opened its doors to ensure women could exercise their right to choose an abortion, more than 1,000 protesters harassed my six patients. During the past two decades that I have worked to give women access to safe abortion services, a mentally ill man has attacked my clinic with a sledgehammer and butyric acid has been slipped through my clinic's doors. But, the greatest threat to women's access to safe and confidential reproductive health services has been the Louisiana legislature's unending efforts to pass laws that restrict a woman's right to choose abortion.
The courts have been the only protection for Louisiana's women under this constant assault on their rights. Louisiana has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation. In 1991, Louisiana passed a ban on all abortions, except when the woman's life is endangered or when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest. A legal challenge to this law by abortion providers, including myself, with the help of the Center for Reproductive Law and Policy, is the only reason it does not stand today.
Louisiana law does not allow any public funding of abortions, which particularly affects low-income women. Louisiana doctors, hospitals and other medical providers are allowed to refuse to provide abortions on the grounds that it is against their religious beliefs. The Louisiana State University Medical Center's inhumane and medically unethical abortion policy turns down women for abortion unless they have a greater than 50 percent chance of dying from the pregnancy.
Under state laws, women who want abortion services at my clinic are forced to make two trips before they can have a legal abortion. Twenty-four hours prior to obtaining an abortion women must receive state-prepared materials, to dissuade them from exercising their right to choose abortion. While serving no actual health purpose, these requirements increase the cost of the procedure; require a woman to take additional time off from work or to arrange child care; and sometimes force her to remain away from home overnight or pay for another round trip to the clinic.
In Louisiana, young women are forced to get parental consent in order to have access to a legal abortion. Louisiana's governor has ordered surprise raids to be conducted at abortion clinics and attempted to burden clinics, including Hope Medical Group for Women, with frivolous regulations regarding laundry rooms, lighting, and bathroom showers. Many of these laws that could have effectively left women with no access to safe and confidential abortion services would still be in place if they were not challenged by providers, like myself and others, in the courts.
The Fifth Circuit is very closely divided about the level of protection for a woman's right to choose under the law. Judge Pickering's appointment would make this court even less likely to strike down laws that violate women's constitutional rights. I joined a lawsuit, Okpalobi v. Foster, challenging a 1997 abortion law that exposed physicians to 10 years of civil liability for any damages caused by an abortion. I believe the purpose of the law is to scare physicians out of providing services with the end goal of making abortion unavailable in the state of Louisiana. My lawyers argued before the Fifth Circuit that by placing unlimited power to sue in private individual's hands, abortion providers would be litigated out of existence. The Fifth Circuit did not address this major issue of whether the state could use its power to force abortion providers to shut down their clinics and offices. Instead, in March 2001, the Fifth Circuit dismissed the case. We are now fighting to stop this law in state court, but it is my firm belief that the Fifth Circuit took a pass on a law that renders abortion legal but unavailable in the state of Louisiana.
I implore you not to confirm Judge Pickering. His opposition to women's rights means there should be no seat for him on the Fifth Circuit.
Sincerely,
Robin Rothrock
Administrator
Hope Medical Group for Women
Shreveport, Louisiana
|
