Justice Barrett: A threat to more than just abortion

Planned Parenthood’s Brigid Leahy warns of conservative court’s potential impact on health care, LGBTQ rights

Justice Amy Coney Barrett takes the Constitutional Oath administered by Justice Clarence Thomas at the White House Monday night in front of her husband and President Trump. (Facebook/The White House)

Justice Amy Coney Barrett takes the Constitutional Oath administered by Justice Clarence Thomas at the White House Monday night in front of her husband and President Trump. (Facebook/The White House)

By Ted Cox

Brigid Leahy of Planned Parenthood Illinois Action called Tuesday “a difficult day” after Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed by the U.S. Senate to assume a seat on the Supreme Court.

As President Trump’s third appointee replaces liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, it creates what would appear to be a 6-3 conservative majority on the high court, potentially endangering abortion rights granted under the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision — a campaign promise Trump made to his supporters four years ago.

“I know that abortion has been getting a lot of the attention, and rightly so,” Leahy said Tuesday in a phone interview. “It is a very important issue, and it would be incredibly dangerous and tragic if Roe, after more than 45 years, were to be set aside by this new court. But that is only the tip of the iceberg.”

Although Barrett was frustratingly vague about her legal positions in her Senate confirmation hearings, Leahy said, “Amy Coney Barrett’s views are very clear. She poses a direct threat to abortion access, birth control, the Affordable Care Act, and so many more issues that are important to Americans across this country.”

As an appellate judge since 2017, Barrett has defended states’ rights to limit abortion access, and in earlier academic writings while a law professor at the University of Notre Dame she attacked the 2012 majority opinion issued by Chief Justice John Roberts defending the Affordable Care Act. She’s also been dismissive of rights granted to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals, and queers.

“Her record is very, very clear,” Leahy said. “We know where she stands.”

As Planned Parenthood Illinois Action’s senior director of public policy, Leahy said she found it “jarring” that in confirmation hearings Barrett wouldn’t even grant that privacy rights established under the high court’s landmark 1965 Griswold decision are established law. That’s especially troubling, she added, in light of Barrett’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act and the court’s 2012 decision that preserved it, reflected in an academic piece published in 2017 shortly before Trump appointed her as an appellate judge.

“She believed the ACA should have been struck down,” Leahy said. “That really makes us think that she will be open to arguments that the ACA is unconstitutional, and the consequences for that would be significant — particularly on women’s health.”

The court will hear a case threatening the foundations of Obamacare on Nov. 10, a week after the general election. According to Leahy, striking down the ACA would threaten not just coverage for preexisting conditions, which has received much attention during the presidential campaign, but also maternity coverage — often denied in policies before Obamacare — and “a whole slew of preventive benefits for women,” from annual physicals to mammograms, cancer screenings, immunizations, and much more.

“It all could potentially be scrapped,” Leahy said. “We don’t know what’s going to happen if suddenly people are thrown off of their health insurance.”

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“Amy Coney Barrett’s views are very clear. She poses a direct threat to abortion access, birth control, the Affordable Care Act, and so many more issues that are important to Americans across this country.”

Brigid Leahy of Planned Parenthood Illinois Action (One Illinois/Ted Cox)

The same uncertainty now surrounds gay rights. “We know that in her past statements Barrett has been hostile to the decision that granted marriage equality across the country,” Leahy said. “It’s hard again to predict, but given what Barrett has said … we could have a challenge to marriage equality.”

That threatens political chaos to families that have been formed — many with children — over the last decade. “Depending on where they live, their marriage might not be recognized any more,” Leahy said. “I can’t imagine that happening to families all across this country.” That threatens not only legal rights such as the ability to file a joint federal tax return, but potentially creates a situation in which one spouse might be refused hospital visitation rights if, say, the family were involved in an auto accident in a state refusing to recognize marriage equality.

“We have great concerns about transgender rights,” Leahy added, as Barrett has “misgendered transgender individuals,” at one point referring to a transgender woman as “a physiological male identifying as a female.”

“If you are not able to accept someone’s identity, how are you going to respect their fundamental rights under the law?” Leahy said.

These rights are relatively safe in Illinois, she added, where the Reproductive Health Act signed into law last year preserved Illinois abortion rights no matter what happens with Roe, while the state also has its own marriage-equality statute. “We’re better off than some people in other states,” she said, “and that’s what I think is so unfortunate. … Your basic rights shouldn’t depend on what state you’re in.”

Leahy said the dangers of a piecemeal, patchwork approach to state’s rights should be abundantly clear with the way the COVID-19 pandemic has ravaged the nation in waves without a unified federal approach to halt it. Which only brings things full circle with the rush by Republicans in the Senate and the Trump administration to push through the Barrett appointment even as the election is ongoing — in the midst of that very same pandemic.

“The rush to push through a political nominee at this time is completely out of touch with the priorities of average Americans and what most of the country wants,” Leahy said. “We are in a national health crisis right now, and yet the Republican Senate and the Trump administration have decided their top priority was to push through a nominee before the election rather than put together a national strategy to address the pandemic and make sure that we’re all safe, and to provide relief for people.

“There are families suffering right now in this country, people who have lost their jobs, people who are laid off, small businesses that are at risk of closing,” she added. “We’re seeing the numbers spike. We’re seeing them spike here in Illinois. So it’s incredibly out of touch to think that during this public health crisis the No. 1 priority is to push forward a Supreme Court nominee. Plus, the nominee is really out of step with the sentiments of the vast majority of Americans,” who want to see the Roe decision preserved and who recognize gay rights.

Barrett’s nomination drew the same complaints from Illinois’s two U.S. senators, Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin, with both voting against her confirmation. Duckworth issued a statement saying, “Instead of addressing the many life-and-death issues facing working families during COVID-19, Trump and the Senate Republicans are focused on jamming through this nomination in a transparent grab for power so they can achieve their long-sought goal of repealing the Affordable Care Act and ripping away health care from millions — including every COVID-19 survivor who now has a pre-existing condition.”

“The American people would rightly think that we would be doing everything imaginable, everything within our power to address this pandemic in this rare five-day session leading up to a national election. But they would be wrong,” Durbin added. “They would be wrong because that is not the priority in the Senate. The priority in the Republican-controlled Senate is the filling of a vacancy on the Supreme Court.”

Jennifer Welch, president of Planned Parenthood Illinois Action, echoed many of the same concerns, calling Barrett’s confirmation “a direct attack on the health and rights of Illinois residents and an insult to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legacy. We stand united with Illinois’s elected leaders who voiced their opposition to this rushed and unethical confirmation to the people’s court mere days before the presidential election.

“We are in the middle of a global pandemic and the court is hearing oral arguments about the Trump administration’s attack on the Affordable Care Act lawsuit just one week after the election,” Welch added. “The Supreme Court’s decision in this case could have dire consequences for our state, stripping away health-care access for thousands of Illinoisans and increasing the burden on our state’s strained and underfunded social safety yet.”

“This was not the time to do this,” Leahy said. “Really, the focus should be on the pandemic and on the very real concerns that people have right now.”