What's At Stake!
URGENT: Take action immediately!
The "nuclear option" -- busting the filibuster
In their zeal to pack the courts with anti-choice extremists, President Bush and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist want to break Senate rules and eliminate the Senate’s 200-year tradition of rules that foster consensus and allow the minority party a meaningful voice. This "nuclear option" would take away our most powerful line of defense against extremist judges: the filibuster.
What does the “nuclear option” have to do with the Supreme Court and the right to choose?
* President Bush has not nominated even one circuit court judge who supports a woman’s right to choose. In fact, many of his nominees have called for Roe v. Wade to be overturned. We have every reason to believe that Bush will put an anti-choice judge on the Supreme Court as soon as he gets the chance.
* President Bush may get to nominate up to four justices during his second term.
* Supreme Court justices serve for life. Once they are confirmed, they will hold extraordinary power over the lives of ordinary Americans for generations, and there is almost no way to remove them from the bench.
* The Supreme Court protects our most cherished constitutional rights, including a woman’s right to choose safe and legal abortion. If Bush stacks the Supreme Court with anti-choice justices, there’s little we can do to prevent Roe from being overturned.
During President Bush’s first term, senators used the filibuster carefully and selectively. While the Senate confirmed more than 200 of President Bush’s judicial nominees to lifetime appointments, senators used the filibuster to block only 10 of the very most controversial nominees.
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George W. Bush's Judicial Nominees
A revolution is underway in the federal courts.
Rights and laws that generations of Americans had come to take for granted have been wiped off the books, and more are at risk. Already courts have struck down anti-discrimination laws, part of the Violence Against Women Act, affirmative action programs, and other guarantees of equal opportunity. And the courts are allowing more and more restrictions on a woman’s right to choose.
NARAL Pro-Choice America has conducted comprehensive research on Bush’s anti-choice judicial nominees, and the potential damage that such manipulation of the courts could have on the future of choice.
President Bush's Drive to Pack the Federal Courts with Anti-Choice Judges
* The Bush Judges: Rolling Back Rights
* NARAL Pro-Choice America Judges and Choice Study
* Fast Growing Threats to the Right to Privacy and the Right to Choose
http://www.naral.org/Issues/courts/bush_noms_index.cfm
Biographies of Current U.S Supreme Court Justices
The retirement of a single United States Supreme Court justice could have a dramatic impact on the constitutional protection of a woman’s right to choose. The two most significant cases dealing with reproductive rights in the last decade have been decided by the narrowest of margins, a vote of 5-4.
While choice once enjoyed a comfortable majority on the Court, it now hangs precariously in the balance.
http://www.naral.org/Issues/supremecourt/scotus_bios.cfm
40,000,000 dead babies concerns some of us as well, in spite of the phantom constitutional right to kill those babies ("choose")which you cite. I pray for pro-life judges so that someday the killing might stop and our country become more civilized.