Wendy Vitter has been nominated by President Trump for a lifetime appointment to the U.S. District Court in Louisiana, and is expected to receive a vote in a Senate committee tomorrow. Vitter has a track record of promoting anti-science myths which call into question her capacity to impartially evaluate evidence and expert testimony as a future judge. Senators should think long and hard if they want someone with this kind of judgement on the bench.
Vitter is on record perpetuating the myth that abortion causes breast cancer. When speaking on a panel called Abortion Hurts Women’s Health, Vitter claimed that there is a “connection between cancer and post-abortive women.” The American Cancer Society has rigorously assessed this claim and dismissed it as false. So have the World Health Organization and numerous other medical associations.
Wendy Vitter answers questions at her April 2018 confirmation hearing. Vitter, who received the lowest “qualified” rating from the American Bar Association, is President Trump’s nominee for a lifetime judicial appointment.
At the panel, Vitter publicly urged people to pressure medical providers to distribute a brochure titled “The Pill Kills.” One of the most pernicious and unscientific myths included is the statement that hormonal birth control causes “spontaneous abortions” (the pill actually prevents eggs from ever being fertilized in the first place). The same literature claims that birth control causes miscarriages, makes women “more likely to develop lethal infections” and “die a violent death.” Through these false claims, Vitter confuses people about the science of birth control and makes it harder for them to access much-needed health services.
How could it be that such a nominee would not be laughed out of the Senate chamber? Well, let’s not forget that it’s considerably easier now to pack the courts with unqualified nominees since the elimination of the filibuster for judicial nominees. Further, the Trump administration does not have a great track record of vetting judicial nominees, and the Senate’s willingness to set aside unqualified nominees has been non-existent: not a single Republican senator has voted against a single nominee.
This allowed President Trump to appoint four times as many judges in his first year as President Obama did in his. The American Bar Association gave Vitter’s nomination its lowest qualified rating.
Multiple scientific and public interest organizations urged the Senate to vote against Vitter’s nomination:
Governmental policy and decision-making should be informed by scientific evidence and the best available data. When hearing cases involving governmental policies or actions, judges must be able to evaluate evidence about harms and benefits in an independent and careful manner by evaluating the weight of the evidence. Failing to consider relevant, compelling evidence and placing inappropriate weight on poorly supported assertions should disqualify nominees from judicial appointments…
To merit confirmation, judges must exhibit an ability to appropriately weigh and contextualize scientific evidence when matters involving science are before them. Vitter’s misrepresentations of scientific evidence call into question her ability to do so appropriately.
Judges need to be able to evaluate expert testimony and scientific evidence in an impartial way. How can we trust Vitter to appropriately evaluate evidence and expertise in a courtroom when she refuses to disavow the distribution of materials that distort the science on women’s health?