Biden Nominates Career Abortion Lawyer to Appeals Court

Rikelman lost Supreme Court case that overturned Roe v. Wade

President Joe Biden nominated pro-abortion lawyer Julie Rikelman to the Boston-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, the White House announced July 29.

Rikelman’s nomination is likely to encounter opposition in the evenly split U.S. Senate. Left-wing activists are applying pressure to Democratic senators, urging them to accelerate the pace of judicial confirmations out of fear that Republicans will retake control of the chamber after the November elections.

Rikelman currently serves as senior director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, an international abortion defense organization with offices in New York, Washington, Switzerland, Colombia, and Kenya. The group’s mission, according to its website, is to use “the power of law to advance reproductive rights as fundamental human rights around the world.”

Rikelman represented Mississippi’s only state-licensed abortion clinic in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, on which the Supreme Court decided on June 24. The court upheld a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy and overturned the 1973 abortion precedent Roe v. Wade, returning the regulation of abortion to the states.

During oral arguments on Dec. 1, 2021, Rikelman said, “Mississippi’s ban on abortion two months before viability is flatly unconstitutional,” adding the state wanted the court to dismantle Roe “and allow states to force women to remain pregnant and give birth against their will.”

Erasing or weakening abortion “will propel women backward” and do “profound damage to women’s liberty, equality, and the rule of law,” she said. “Two generations have now relied on this right, and one out of every four women makes the decision to end a pregnancy.”

After the hearing, Rikelman told Slate magazine that abortion benefits women by increasing their earning power.

“The data over the past 50 years is overwhelming. We

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