Obama Nominee for Judge Says Abortion Frees Women From “Conscription Into Maternity”

The United States Senate Judiciary Committee will vote this week on President Obama’s nomination of Cornelia Pillard to the court that many consider the second-most powerful and important in the land, the Court of Appeals of the D.C. Circuit. Of President Obama’s judicial nominees who have exhibited hostility towards unborn children, perhaps none is as flagrant, or as out-of-touch, as Cornelia Pillard.

In a 2007 law review article, Pillard wrote that “[r]eproductive rights, including the rights to contraception and abortion, play a central role in freeing women from historically routine conscription into maternity” (emphasis added). She believes there is an “equal protection” right to abortion—a position never adopted by the United States Supreme Court.

In other words, she believes that women cannot be equal citizens unless they have an unlimited right to abortion, and rather than suggest that the Constitution be amended if her views win favor with the American people, she asserts that the Constitution already protects abortion by forbidding states to deny anyone the equal protection of the laws.

Given Pillard’s views on equal protection and abortion, she would likely find most laws enacted to protect unborn children and their mothers invalid, including such widely-supported measures as late-term abortion restrictions, parental involvement and informed consent requirements, and clinic regulations.

Pillard writes that “[a]ntiabortion laws and other restraints on reproductive freedom not only enforce women’s incubation of unwanted pregnancies, but also prescribe a ‘vision of the woman’s role’ as mother and caretaker of children in a way that is at odds with equal protection” (emphasis added).

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