Amy Coney
Barrett
Revealed: Amy Coney Barrett supported group that
said life begins at fertilization
Barrett signed newspaper ad in 2006 sponsored by St
Joseph County Right to Life, an extreme anti-choice group
Stephanie
Kirchgaessner in Washington
@skirchy Email
Thu 1 Oct
2020 13.45 BSTLast modified on Thu 1 Oct 2020 14.02 BST
Amy Coney
Barrett, the Trump administration’s supreme court nominee, publicly supported
an organization in 2006 that has said life begins at fertilization. It has also
said that the discarding of unused or frozen embryos created in the in vitro
fertilization (IVF) process ought to be criminalized, a view that is considered
to be extreme even within the anti-abortion movement.
The
revelation is likely to lead to new questions about how Barrett’s personal
views on abortion may not only shape reproductive rights in the US for decades to
come if she is confirmed by the Senate, but how her appointment could affect
legal rights for women undergoing fertility treatment, as well as their
doctors.
In 2006,
while Barrett worked as a law professor at Notre Dame, she was one of hundreds
of people who signed a full-page newspaper advertisement sponsored by St Joseph
County Right to Life, an extreme anti-choice group located in the city of South
Bend, which is in the region know as Michiana.
The
advertisement, which appeared in the South Bend Tribune, stated: “We, the
following citizens of Michiana, oppose abortion on demand and defend the right
to life from fertilization to natural death. Please continue to pray to end
abortion.”
The
statement was signed by Barrett and her husband, Jesse.
In an
interview with the Guardian, Jackie Appleman, the executive director of St
Joseph County Right to Life, said that the organization’s view on life
beginning at fertilization – as opposed to the implementation of an embryo or a
fetus being viable – did have implications for in vitro fertilization, which
usually involves the creation of multiple embryos.
“Whether
embryos are implanted in the woman and then selectively reduced or it’s done in
a petri dish and then discarded, you’re still ending a new human life at that
point and we do oppose that,” Appleman said, adding that the discarding of
embryos during the IVF process was equal to the act of having an abortion.
Asked
whether doctors who perform abortion ought to be criminalized, she said: “We
support the criminalization of the doctors who perform abortions. At this point
we are not supportive of criminalizing the women. We would be supportive of
criminalizing the discarding of frozen embryos or selective reduction through
the IVF process.”
Appleman
said the organization’s views reflected a mission “to create a culture of life
and love in which every child is protected by law”.
The White
House deputy press secretary, Judd Deere, said in a statement to the Guardian:
“As Judge Barrett said on the day she was nominated, ‘A judge must apply the
law as written. Judges are not policymakers, and they must be resolute in
setting aside any policy views they might hold.’”
The White
House also pointed out that in her role as an appellate court judge in the
seventh circuit Barrett had declined in July to stay the execution of Daniel
Lewis Lee, a white supremacist convicted killer. Barrett’s decision in that
case apparently showed a willingness to contradict her personal stated support
for all life from “fertilization to natural death”.
Barrett’s
public embrace of a strict anti-choice position will nevertheless fuel concerns
of progressives and pro-choice Americans about what the 48-year-old judge’s
confirmation to the supreme court will mean for abortion rights once
conservatives gain a 6-3 majority on the court.
For years,
mainstream anti-abortion activists have avoided including discarded embryos
created in the in vitro fertilization process in their crusade to protect every
embryo, in part because seeking to curtail IVF treatment would be very
unpopular. In Alabama, which has passed a near-total ban on abortion, embryos
created through IVF are excepted from the law.
But the
issue has gained resonance with some fringe groups who have sought to give
fertilized eggs a constitutionally protected “right to life”.
Dov Fox,
author of Birth Rights and Wrongs: How Medicine and Technology are Remaking
Reproduction and the Law, said that if such a movement ever succeeded it could
“have the potential to prop up restrictions on fertility treatment”.
“For
example, by banning IVF procedures that would involve freezing, destroying or
donating for research any embryo a woman doesn’t implant all at once, despite
the health risks associated with high-order pregnancies and the hormone drugs
required to extract eggs multiple times,” he said.
Pro-choice
advocates in South Bend described St Joseph County Right to Life as “extreme”,
with a history of supporting “super intimidating” protests at the one facility
in South Bend that provides abortion services.
The group
was established in 1972 and has said its mission is to save “children, women
and men from the devastating effects of abortion and euthanasia”. While it
publishes a full-page advertisement every year, to mark the passage of Roe v
Wade, Barrett’s name did not appear in any other ads that the Guardian found
after 2006.
On its
website, Right to Life said it focuses on “outreach, advocacy, education and
prayer” and said it experienced a “great victory” in 2015 when it shut down
South Bend’s only abortion clinic at the time, “making our community free from
an abortion clinic for the first time in decades”. Three years later, a new
clinic that provides abortions via pill – up to 10 weeks – was opened following
a difficult campaign by pro-choice advocates.
Right to
Life has said the opening of the “new abortion business”, a clinic called the
Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, had led it to a “doubling up on our efforts”.
“We are closely monitoring these threats and executing fierce strategic plan to
protect innocent human life at all ends of the spectrum.”
Amy
Hagstrom Miller, the president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, said
the clinic in South Bend had “direct experience” with the Right to Life group,
which among other anti-choice groups has used the clinic’s name and likeness in
Facebook campaigns to arrange protests.
Clinics
like Whole Woman’s Health Alliance face a number of barriers to treating
patients in Indiana, Hagstrom Miller said, including rules that force patients
who receive a non-surgical abortion from making two visits to a clinic:
including for a mandatory ultrasound and counseling. The clinic sees patients
only twice a week, and on those days the clinic is inundated with upwards of 70
protesters a day, she said.
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