The war on women

By now, the Bush administration’s disdain for women’s reproductive rights is no secret. Almost as soon as he assumed office, in January 2001, George W. made his anti-abortion position plain, stripping funds from clinics for merely lobbying in favor of reproductive rights. He’s catered shamelessly to religious conservatives ever since by attempting to appoint a string of judicial nominees who are openly hostile to the US Supreme Court’s landmark Roe v. Wade decision. But more on that later.

First, consider the quieter, yet no-less-insidious battle Bush has waged over control of one of the most important panels on women’s health policy: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory committee on reproductive-health drugs. This government board plays a crucial role in evaluating the safety and effectiveness of drugs used in obstetrics, gynecology, and related fields. It advises the FDA on medications and treatments, including contraception, hormone therapy, and medical abortions. Simply put, it wields tremendous power in determining the future of reproductive rights.

So imagine the dismay among women’s advocates when the president unveiled his list of 11 appointees to the FDA advisory panel on, of all days, Christmas Eve 2002, thus ensuring that it would receive little public attention. High on the list appeared a thinly credentialed doctor by the name of W. David Hager, whose writings include a book titled As Jesus Cared for Women: Restoring Women Then and Now (Fleming H. Revell, 1998). An obstetrician-gynecologist, Hager is a self-described pro-lifer who aims to incorporate Christianity into medicine. In his book Stress and the Woman’s Body (Fleming H. Revell, 1996), which he co-authored with his wife, Linda, he puts an " emphasis on the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one’s life, " and recommends Scripture readings for such ailments as eating disorders, postpartum depression, and premenstrual syndrome. He refuses to prescribe contraception to unmarried women; instead, he lectures them about the virtues of abstinence. Last August, Hager drafted a " citizen’s petition " for the Christian Medical Association demanding that the FDA revoke its approval of mifepristone, or RU-486 — a drug that the FDA board on which he now sits had studied for years. Clearly, notes Amy Allina, of the National Women’s Health Network, in DC, " The Bush administration chose him for his religious activism, " not his scientific record.

The president’s FDA-appointee list includes two other doctors who’ve long opposed abortion and reproductive rights. Susan Crockett, for one, is a professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center, in San Antonio, who happens to serve on two pro-life organizational boards. Likewise, Joseph Stanford, of the University of Utah, has advocated for " natural family planning, " commonly known as the rhythm method (or no method). He’s argued in his writings that the birth-control pill and emergency contraception can trigger an abortion — a position that not only contradicts the accepted medical view of contraception, but also has political implications.

None of these ideologues will head up the FDA advisory board — although Bush originally appointed Hager to chair the board last October, only to be faced down by howls of protest among women's-rights groups. Advocates are somewhat reassured by the chairmanship of Linda Giudice, a Stanford professor who heads the university hospital’s Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility Center. But the Bush ideologues on the board could threaten women’s reproductive health nevertheless. A bloc of three people with staunch religious views that contradict science could thwart the committee’s work on women’s-health policy. The board, for instance, will have to respond to that so-called citizen’s petition to rescind mifepristone from pharmacy shelves this year. Do we really want members like Hager — who led the anti-mifepristone effort to begin with — deciding this issue for all American women? The panel’s also likely to consider whether to make emergency contraception — which has been shown to be safe and effective, with virtually no side effects — available over the counter. What’s the chance that these three appointees will recommend such access, given their anti-choice positions?

There’s no doubt that the three ultraconservative members of this important FDA committee reflect the Bush administration’s commitment to restrict reproductive rights. They show its determination to undermine women’s health for the sake of politics. And they reveal just how tied to the far right the administration really is. " This decision was not accidental, " says Kate Michelman, of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL). " It was a planned effort by the hard-line conservative base, which calls a lot of the shots on reproductive-rights policy in the Bush White House. " The president’s intent certainly seems clear when you look at his initiatives and actions on women’s health.

But, of course, you have to know to look in the first place.

Stacking the bench

It’s full-steam ahead for the Bush administration and its drive to pack the nation’s courts with archconservative judicial activists. Much has been made of the president’s promise to appoint to the Supreme Court conservative ideologues à la Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. But while waiting for the chance to do so, Bush has nominated one right-winger after another to the lower courts, in a kind of stealth campaign that operates under most radars.

Topping the nominee list is a man whom critics consider stealth-like himself: Miguel Estrada, whose appointment Senate Democrats succeeded in blocking last week. A DC attorney, Estrada has no experience as a judge, and thus no record that can be scrutinized. Yet Bush has nominated him to one of the most influential courts in the country, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Many of his co-workers over the years report that his interpretation of the law stems from a conservative agenda. His former boss at the Office of the US Solicitor General told the Los Angeles Times that Estrada is so " ideologically driven that he couldn’t be trusted to state the law in a fair, neutral way. " When Estrada came before the Senate Judiciary Committee last fall, he dodged questions that would have illuminated his views. Asked about Roe v. Wade, for example, he replied that he hadn’t given the abortion case much thought. That seems so incredible, it borders on laughable. This is, after all, a man who was clerking for pivotal Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy when Roe was challenged in 1989.

Of course, Estrada represents just the tip of the iceberg. Other Bush judicial nominees will soon be coming before the Senate. There’s Jeffrey Sutton, an Ohio lawyer who has fought to limit federal protections against discrimination based on disability, race, age, sex, and religion. There’s Deborah Cook, an Ohio Supreme Court judge whose opinions reveal what civil libertarians describe as " a callousness toward the rights of ordinary citizens which offends any reasonable sense of justice. " And then there’s the California judge Carolyn Kuhl, who, as Justice Department employee in the 1980s, urged the Supreme Court to overturn Roe because of its " flawed " reasoning.

These days, the stakes in judicial nominations are high. Now that Republicans control both congressional houses, Democrats are cringing at the prospect of far-right ideologues dominating the bench for years, long after Bush leaves the White House. The new Senate Republican majority has ushered in an era of conveyor-belt-style confirmations. Traditionally, the Senate Judiciary Committee has heard no more than one court-of-appeals nomination at a time. On January 29, however, the committee, under the leadership of Utah Republican Orrin Hatch, hurried through three appeals-court nominations (including Sutton and Cook). In just two weeks, it reviewed the same number of appeals-court nominees that it took six months for the committee to consider during the Clinton administration. Observes Ralph Neas, of the People for the American Way, a liberal-advocacy group in DC, " Bush wants the Senate to be a rubber stamp and rush through as many right-wing ideologues as possible. "

If Bush gets his way, the consequences for American jurisprudence will be severe. Right now, of the 13 federal appellate courts, eight are controlled by Republican-appointed judges. Democratic appointees control three, while the remaining two maintain an equal composition. By the end of 2004, if Bush’s nominees win approval, every single appellate court could end up dominated by Republican-appointed judges. For many Americans, these courts are the last resort. The nation’s highest court hears only 100 cases each year, compared to the 28,000 cases heard by the appeals courts. That means that appellate decisions often serve as the final legal word on reproductive rights, the rights of the disabled, civil liberties, labor protections — the list goes on and on.