[via NOW] Action Needed: Your calls and email messages are needed to the members of the Senate to urge them to oppose the confirmation of Claude A. Allen. Allen has been nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and his appointment to that position would be nothing short of a civil liberties disaster.
The vote in the Senate could possibly take place as soon as today—but it could also be delayed into next week. The National Organization for Women strongly urges the defeat of this extremist right-wing nominee.
Please use this link to send an email to your senators.
Background: Claude Allen's nomination arouses concern for several reasons. First, he lacks the experience normally required to sit on the appellate bench: He has never been a lower court judge and has spent, at most, eight years practicing law. Second, in the course of his career as a political appointee for former Virginia Governor James Gilmore and George W. Bush, Allen has amassed a record of hard-line right-wing policies. Third, his behavior toward those disagree with him is often hostile or threatening, thus suggesting that Allen is temperamentally unfit to be a federal judge. Finally, the nomination of Allen, a Virginian, to a Fourth Circuit seat traditionally reserved for a Marylander, calls into question the legitimacy of his nomination, and he is opposed by both Maryland senators.
Allen has been hostile to women's reproductive rights. In 1997, he helped craft a Virginia state law that mandated parental notification for minors seeking to obtain an abortion and allowed judges to deny even mature minors a bypass. Allen also helped push through a law that would have made performance of a variety of vaguely-defined abortion procedures a Class 1 misdemeanor for Virginia physicians. As recent as the year 2000, Allen served on the Republican National Convention’s resolutions committee which supported retaining the party platform’s call for a constitutional amendment to criminalize abortion.
However, Allen does not limit his ultra-conservative ideology to matters of reproductive freedom. He has consistently opposed comprehensive sexual and safe-sex education, insisting instead upon ineffective abstinence-only education. Allen has a clear record of hostility to groups working to educate vulnerable populations about HIV, even investigating those groups that publicly disagreed with him. Further, Allen clearly has anti-gay views and has made numerous public anti-gay and lesbian comments. Finally, while at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Allen has worked to limit federal anti-discrimination rules as part of President Bush’s “faith-based initiatives.”
Again, please use this link to send an email to your senators.
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