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Congressional Testimony
January 18, 2001, Thursday
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY
LENGTH: 1867 words
COMMITTEE:
SENATE JUDICIARY
HEADLINE: TESTIMONY
HEARINGS ON THE NOMINATION OF JOHN ASHCROFT TO THE OFFICE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF
THE UNITED STATES
TESTIMONY-BY: FRANK SUSMAN
BODY: JANUARY 18, 2001 TESTIMONY OF FRANK SUSMAN
BEFORE THE UNITED STATES SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE Mr. Chairman and members of
the committee. I appreciate your invitation and this opportunity to share my
thoughts on the pending nomination of John Ashcroft as Attorney General of the
United States. Up front, let me state I strongly oppose this nomination. I am a
practicing attorney in Missouri, with a long history of handling matters
involving health care, particularly as they relate to women, contraception and
abortion. Although a minor part of my law practice, I have been
counsel in at least six cases involving these issues before the United States
Supreme Court, three additional cases before the Missouri Supreme Court, as well
as numerous other cases in courts throughout the United States. Domestically,
the cabinet position of attorney general is the most powerful of any. The
Attorney General has the ability to shape the future of the federal judiciary
through his or her involvement in judicial appointments to the 641 District
Court positions, the 179 Circuit Courts of Appeal positions and the nine Supreme
Court positions. The Attorney General does much more than merely enforce the
laws of the land. The Attorney General is able to influence legislation merely
by the persuasive powers of the office. It is myopic to believe that the office
possesses no discretion in interpreting the laws of this land, particularly on
legal issues neither previously nor clearly decided by the Supreme Court. The
Attorney General has the discretion to select which laws are to be given
priority in enforcement, through control of the purse and the assignment of
other resources. Based upon the nominee's consistent public statements and
public actions over many years, I have no doubts that he would use the powers of
the office to shape the judiciary and the law to his own personal agenda, at the
great expense of women, minorities and our current body of constitutional and
statutory law. History is, indeed, a reliable precursor of the future. While
Missouri's Attorney General, the nominee issued a legal opinion seeking to
undermine the state's nursing practice act. (No. 32, Jan. 2, 1980). He opined
that the taking of medical histories, the giving of information about and the
dispensing of condoms, i.u.d.s and oral contraceptives, the performance of
breast exams, pelvic exams and pap smears, the testing for sexually transmitted
diseases and the providing of counseling and community education, by nurse
practitioners, constituted the criminal act of the unauthorized practice of
medicine. Each of these services were at the time routine health care practices
provided by Missouri nurses for many years and, in fact, were being provided by
nurses within the State's own county health departments. As directly related to
the case of Sermchief v. Gonzales, 660 S.W.2d 683 (Mo. banc 1983), filed by
impacted physicians and nurses, these nursing activities were being provided in
federally designated low income counties, in which there was not a single
physician who accepted as Medicaid eligible women patients for pre-natal care
and childbirth, because of the low fee reimbursement schedules established by
the State of Missouri. This Opinion by the nominee provided the impetus for the
State's Board of Registration for the Healing Arts to threaten the plaintiff
physicians and nurses with a show cause order as to why criminal charges should
not be brought against them. Implementation of the nominee's Opinion would have
eliminated the cost-effective and readily available delivery of these essential
services to indigent women, who often utilize county health departments as their
primary health care provider, and would have shut and bolted the door to poor
women who relied upon these services as their only means to control their
fertility. In Sermchief, an unanimous Missouri Supreme Court struck down the
nominee's interpretation of the Nursing Practice Act. During the nominee's term
as Governor of Missouri, family planning funding was limited to the lowest
amount necessary to achieve matching federal Medicaid funds. During this same
period, teenage pregnancies in Missouri increased. The nominee vigorously
opposed the Snowe/Reid amendment to the federal health benefits plan, seeking to
extend federal health care coverage to include contraceptives. The nominee
co-sponsored unsuccessful congressional legislation seeking to impose upon all
Americans a congressional finding that "life begins at conception," which would
have eliminated the availability of many common forms of contraception and
legislation requiring
parental consent for minors to receive
contraception. Throughout his political career and at every opportunity, the
nominee has sought to limit access to and to require
parental
consent for not only
abortion, but for contraception,
as well; although
parental consent has never been suggested as
a prerequisite for a minor to engage in sexual intercourse or to bear children.
Although the nominee has continually sought to give these decisional rights of a
minor to her parents, he has never suggested that these same parents have any
financial or other responsibility for the minor's child once born. The nominee's
involvement with Bob Jones University, with the nominations of Dr. Henry Foster
and of Dr. David Sacher as Surgeon General, with the nomination of Ronnie White
as Federal District Court Judge, his tireless opposition to court ordered
desegregation plans, his support of school vouchers and of school prayer, all
portray a person of deep personal convictions -- an admirable quality in other
contexts. But when those convictions are starkly at odds with existing law and
public sentiment in this country, then a person with such convictions should not
be asked to ignore them in an effort to carry out faithfully the oath of office.
Nor should we ever place any nominee in such an untenable dilemma. I implore you
to send a message to our president-elect -- to submit to this committee a
nominee for Attorney General, in whom an overwhelming majority of our citizens
can admire, take comfort and have confidence in to administer the office of
Attorney General in a fair and just manner for all Americans; rather than an
individual who has devoted his political career opposing the laws of this land
on a wide variety of issues affecting the everyday lives and will of the people.
LOAD-DATE: January 23, 2001, Tuesday