Amy Archives - Mediarabe

The Health 202: A court with Amy Coney Barrett is more likely to reinterpret Roe than reverse it

October 14, 2020

That’s the trajectory those on both sides of the abortion debate expect if Barrett joins the court.

“The point is she could rid of the right for millions without actually overturning Roe,” Leila Abolfazli, director of federal reproductive rights at the National Women’s Law Center, told me. “It’s like bit by bit narrowing the procedure until there is no procedure left.”

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony List, put it this way: “Reinterpreting Roe, that is how I think about it.”

Barrett, who will sit again before the Senate Judiciary Committee for a third day of confirmation hearings, is expected to tilt the court further to the right, potentially giving it a five- or even six-vote majority on cases involving abortion restrictions passed by the states.

She has a lengthy public record that underscores her personal opposition to abortion. But through hours of hearings

Amy Coney Barrett isn’t nominee for health care czar

October 14, 2020

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| Global Health

Amy Coney Barrett has accomplished many things in her career. Becoming an authority or a policy maker on health care isn’t one of them.

At Notre Dame, she was a professor at the law school, not at the Eck Institute for Global Health. She’s written for the Cornell Law Review, not The New England Journal of Medicine. She’s up to replace the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg at the Supreme Court, not Dr. Anthony Fauci at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

No one would have guessed it, though, from listening to Democratic senators on the first day of her much-anticipated confirmation hearings. They acted as if Barrett has been nominated to become the nation’s health care czar, responsible for everything from the fate of Obamacare to the country’s coronavirus response.

This tack underlined political themes that Democrats are hammering home in the final weeks of the election, but

Jeremy Dys: Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination won’t be derailed by Democrats’ political theater

October 13, 2020

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| Health Facts

Posterboard pictures and a children’s book about the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg set the stage for Democrats’ political theater at the Senate Committee on the Judiciary as it launched confirmation hearings for Judge Amy Coney Barrett Monday.

Unsurprisingly, the political Left seemed to read from the same script: whine about the process, take rhetorical shots at President Trump, and, if all else fails, try to disqualify Barrett on the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Such attacks are destined to fail.

For one thing, no one seriously believes that Judge Barrett is the ACA’s grim reaper. Are we really to think that Barrett—a mother to seven children, including one with special needs—is insensitive to the health care needs of normal Americans? In all likelihood, she has spent more time toting her children to doctor’s appointments in her Honda Odyssey than the average judge – or politician.

JOHN YOO: IF SENATORS ATTACK

Amy Coney Barrett confirmation: Trump’s nominee vows to be apolitical as Democrats warn of threat to health care

October 13, 2020

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Democrats acknowledged there is little they can do to stop Barrett’s confirmation. So they seemed determined to use the hearings to portray Republicans as a threat to the Affordable Care Act, and the nomination as a last-ditch effort to save Trump should next month’s election lead to litigation in the Supreme Court.

On optics alone, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) seemed to speak for everyone when he said, “There is nothing about this that is normal.”

The nominee, who spoke for just 12 minutes, wore a black face mask for nearly the entire hearing. Several members of the Senate Judiciary Committee participated remotely, one because he has tested positive for the coronavirus. In a first, the Architect of the Capitol submitted a letter certifying that the hearing room met Centers for Disease Control and Prevention safety regulations.

And when the 48-year-old Barrett, nominated by Trump after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death

Supreme Court hearings today: Amy Coney Barrett faces Senate Judiciary Committee amid COVID-19 pandemic

October 12, 2020

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| Better Health

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett declared Monday that Americans “deserve an independent Supreme Court that interprets our Constitution and laws as they are written,” encapsulating her conservative approach to the law that has Republicans excited about the prospect of her taking the place of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg before Election Day.

Barrett spoke about her judicial philosophy, her experience and her large family at the end of the first day of her fast-tracked confirmation hearings that Senate Democrats are using to try and brand her a threat to Americans’ health care during the coronavirus pandemic.

After sitting in silence through nearly four hours of opening statements from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the 48-year-old federal appeals court judge laid out her approach to the bench, which she has likened to that of her conservative mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

VIDEO: Watch Amy Coney

Amy Coney Barrett Supreme Court nomination hearings begin Monday

October 11, 2020

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| Health Current Events

But reminders of covid-19 will be inescapable.

The mere circumstances of the confirmation hearing — usually a packed affair on Capitol Hill that draws hundreds of supporters, protesters and observers — will be bare-bones, with rigorous social-distancing guidelines in place to prevent any transmission among the few allowed inside the Hart Senate Office meeting room. At least two members of the Judiciary Committee will participate in the proceedings remotely, after being diagnosed with covid-19 or to protect themselves from the virus.

And Democratic senators, realizing that their most potent weapon against Barrett is a sustained attack on how the appeals court judge may rule on the Affordable Care Act, have crafted a strategy narrowly centered on health care and efforts to paint Republicans as recklessly rushing to confirm Barrett as the pandemic continues to consume the nation.

“We are all agreed on two starting points: One is the importance of

Whether or not Amy Coney Barrett gets on the Supreme Court, abortion rights should stand

October 11, 2020

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Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Donald Trumps nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, meets with Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, Oct. 1, 2020. (Erin Scott/Pool via AP) — Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump’s nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, is shown on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 1. (Erin Scott / Pool via Associated Press)

For nearly half a century, women in the United States have had a constitutional right to a safe and legal abortion. And for most of that time, abortion opponents have been trying to take it away. Even as millions of women have availed themselves of that right, nothing short of a war has been waged on their access to abortion. The results include a congressional ban (called the Hyde Amendment) on federal money for abortions and a patchwork of unnecessary state laws that have forced numerous abortion providers to shut down and left some states with a single clinic.

U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel aptly summarized the situation in 2013 when he issued an injunction against a Texas law that

Fauci calls Amy Coney Barrett ceremony in Rose Garden ‘superspreader event’

October 10, 2020

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| Health News

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, on Friday called President Donald Trump’s Rose Garden ceremony last month announcing Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court a “superspreader event.”

Fauci, who was interviewed by CBS News Radio’s White House correspondent Steven Portnoy, defended the efficacy of wearing masks to slow the spread of Covid-19 and used the ceremony as an example.

“Well, I think the data speaks for themselves. We had a superspreader event in the White House and it was in a situation where people were crowded together and were not wearing masks,” he said. “So the data speak for themselves.”

This is not the first time Fauci has been at odds with Trump, who has had a cavalier attitude toward Covid-19 since being released from the hospital Monday after being infected with the virus, and has boasted about his apparent recovery and given mixed messaging around

Amy Coney Barrett on SCOTUS could affect workplace protections

October 5, 2020

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Judge Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the White House after being put forward by President Trump as his nominee to fill Justice Ginsburg’s vacant seat.

USA TODAY

The debate surrounding Amy Coney Barrett’s potential appointment to the Supreme Court has focused largely on the fate of abortion rights. But her tenure could significantly affect workers’ rights as well, experts say.

While no one can predict how justices will ultimately rule once they have a seat on the nation’s highest court, their past records offer a meaningful window into how they interpret the law. And in cases ranging from harassment on the job to debt collection, Barrett’s opinions have often tilted toward bosses and business.

“Through her record on the Seventh Circuit … her rulings have favored employers as opposed to workers,’’ says Carl Tobias, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, referring to the 7th U.S.

Fears for Obamacare if Amy Coney Barrett confirmed to supreme court

October 2, 2020

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| Health Article

This month, Congress is expected to begin confirmation hearings for Donald Trump’s nominee for the supreme court, Amy Coney Barrett. If confirmed, she could be the decisive vote in a case being heard days after the election, which seeks to strike down the landmark Affordable Care Act – a move that could leave millions of Americans without healthcare in the middle of a pandemic.

Barack Obama wearing a suit and tie: Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

© Provided by The Guardian
Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Barack Obama wearing a suit and tie: Obamacare, Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reform, has been in place for 10 years and underpins much of the country’s healthcare system.

© Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Obamacare, Barack Obama’s signature healthcare reform, has been in place for 10 years and underpins much of the country’s healthcare system.

Related: Amy Coney Barrett: what will she mean for women’s rights?

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Trump has pledged to kill the ACA since day one of his presidency, but despite comments to the contrary he has no official plan to replace the healthcare reform law, commonly known as Obamacare. Without it, 20 million

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