Friday Femorandum: A Pretty Bold Claim

Perhaps seeking a distraction from their repeated failure to pass legislation robbing tens of millions of Americans of their health care coverage, Republicans in Congress will vote next week on a bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks. The “Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act”—a name that is inaccurate and unscientific on at least two counts—would make it a crime “to perform or attempt an abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy, with the possibility of a fine, up to five years in prison, or both,” according to The Hill. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said the goal of the bill is “ending suffering and helping people live”—a pretty bold claim, considering that Congressional Republicans oppose have consistently blocked access to prenatal care, maternity care, and child care, and oppose workplace rules that would make it easier for women to continue earning a living before, during, and after their pregnancies.

NARAL Pro-Choice America was among the many groups protesting conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s speech at the Trump International Hotel this week. Advocates were appalled that Gorsuch would participate in an event at a hotel owned by the man who put him on the bench (with a heavy assist from Congress, which simply refused to consider President Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, punting the choice to the next President), pointing out that the move smacked of payback and partisan politics.

As CNN notes, the hotel is embroiled in a massive controversy over whether Trump’s profits from foreign dignitaries who stay there, in part, to get in the President’s good graces constitute a violation of the US Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bans Presidents from taking gifts or bribes from foreign governments.

“The Trump International Hotel is … one of the primary ways in which foreign governments are seeking to curry favor with the President, by holding events there,” [Elizabeth Wydra of the Constitutional Accountability Center] told CNN. “Given that these cases could very well make their way to the Supreme Court, Justice Gorsuch agreeing to speak there raises questions about his impartiality.”

Nan Aron, the president of the progressive Alliance for Justice, a group that opposed Gorsuch’s nomination, also criticized his judgment.

“Justice Gorsuch should have known better than to sign up as the headliner for an event that will line Donald Trump’s pockets in a way that is at best ethically sketchy” Aron said in a statement.

Few people imagine that Gorsuch will actually be impartial when ruling on his political benefactor’s ethically dubious behavior, but his decision to speak at Trump’s hotel is a brazen sign of just how little anyone associated with the new President cares about traditional ethical considerations.

Women’s groups and survivor advocates are fighting back against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ move to make it even harder for college sexual assault survivors to get justice. Last week, after meeting with groups of “men’s rights activists” and others who argue that the real problem facing college campuses isn’t rampant sexual assault but fake rape allegations, DeVos rolled back an Obama-era rule designed to make it more likely that victims of sexual assault on campus would get justice. The new rules increase the burden of proof for assault survivors and will make it easier for people who commit assaults to escape punishment. They will also make student survivors even less likely to report assaults than they already are; accusing a fellow student can be a traumatic process, and increasing the burden of proof on survivors only ensures that more perpetrators will evade justice.

Advocates are raising awareness by posting on social media and elsewhere about the devastating impact the new rules will have on sexual assault survivors, including the fact that they will discourage victims from pursuing justice, using the hashtag #StopBetsy; Common Dreams has more.

Alabama’s terrifying Republican candidate (and likely shoo-in) for US Senator, Roy Moore, may be best known as the “Ten Commandments Judge” who hates Muslims, doesn’t believe in evolution, and wants to ban homosexuality, but did you know he also thinks God gave government the authority to ban every abortion starting at the moment of conception, with no exceptions?

New York Magazine, take it away:

He wants to make every abortion under any circumstances illegal from the moment of conception, and punish those who procure them, regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court says. He made that clear not in some op-ed, but in an opinion from his position as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, in a 2014 case involving prosecuting a woman for endangering her fetus by using drugs:

Because a human life with a full genetic endowment comes into existence at the moment of conception, the self-evident truth that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” encompasses the moment of conception. Legal recognition of the unborn as members of the human family derives ultimately from the laws of nature and of nature’s God, Who created human life in His image and protected it with the commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” Therefore, the interpretation of the word “child” in Alabama’s chemical-endangerment statute, § 26-15- 3.2, Ala. Code 1975, to include all human beings from the moment of conception is fully consistent with these first principles regarding life and law.

As this quote illustrates, Moore is a leader in the “Personhood Movement,” which holds that from the moment of conception a zygote enjoys the full protections of the Equal Protection Clause, which precedes and preempts any claim by the woman involved.

Alabama’s special election is in December, and Moore is heavily favored to defeat his Democratic opponent, Doug Jones.