SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING TESTIMONY

LENGTH: 2367 words

COMMITTEE: SENATE JUDICIARY

HEADLINE: TESTIMONY CONFIRMATION FOR JOHN ASHCROFT FOR U.S. ATTY. GEN. (DAY 3)

TESTIMONY-BY: FRANK SUSMAN , PRACTICING ATTORNEY

AFFILIATION: MISSOURI

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 25, 2001, Thursday