All The Anti-Choice And Anti-Gay Trump Judges 'Pro-Choice' Kyrsten Sinema Voted For: A Really Gross List.

A quick but important history lesson as we enter the next election year.

Kyrsten Sinema of the Sinema Party is a staunch abortion rights supporter. We know this because she says so! After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, she posted on social media, “Throughout my time in Congress, I’ve always supported women’s access to health care, and I’ll continue working with anyone to protect women’s ability to make decisions about their futures.”

Of course, since then, she’s been more wound up over the contrived “border crisis,” which puts her at odds with Democrats — her favorite position. She hasn’t actually done much to fight the persistent right-wing attack on reproductive freedom. Instead, she defended the filibuster’s bodily autonomy, which prevented passage of the Women’s Health Protection Act when Democrats controlled Congress.

But, hey, she’s at least voted for President Joe Biden’s pro-choice judges. Yes, she has. Unfortunately, she also voted for most of Donald Trump’s anti-choice, forced-birth hack judges. She likes voting for judges the way I enjoy collecting Starbucks You Are Here mugs. Not every mug is New Orleans. Some are Orlando.

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Sinema voted to confirm at least nine of Trump’s Legion of Doom membership-ready judicial nominees. There was absolutely no need for her to do this. Republicans held the Senate majority throughout the Trump era, so Democrats should have provided a united front against the radicalization of the courts. They might not have been able to stop it — appealing to Susan Collins’s conscience is never a great strategy — but Sinema didn’t need to help, not if she claimed to care about abortion rights, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, or anything remotely decent.

Sinema, who’d received the full endorsement of Planned Parenthood Action Fund in 2018, voted the next year to confirm United States District Judge Matthew McFarland, whom Planned Parenthood vocally opposed due to his anti-choice record.

From a 2019 press release:

“Planned Parenthood Federation of America strongly condemns today’s confirmation of yet another extreme Trump nominee, Matthew W. McFarland, to a lifetime appointment on the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. McFarland has proven himself an unabashed opponent of reproductive rights.”

Sinema voted for McFarland even after he was forced to amend his Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire because he’d not fully disclosed his ties to an Ohio anti-abortion organization. Last year, McFarland ruled against the Air Force’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate on absurd First Amendment grounds.

She backed United States District Judge Douglas R. Cole’s confirmation in 2019. According to Reproductive Freedom for All, commonly known as NARAL, Cole had previously “defended an Ohio law that requires women to wait 24 hours after receiving an in-person lecture by a physician before accessing abortion care,” as well as “another provision of the law that limited young women’s access to abortion by restricting their access to judicial bypass proceedings.” He’d defended Ohio’s aggressive enforcement of its TRAP (Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers), which forced a Dayton abortion provider to close because of burdensome and medically unnecessary restrictions. (Sinema wasn’t the only Democrat at the time who voted for Cole, though, which sucks.)

Sinema can’t plead ignorance with these votes. When she helped confirm Mark T. Pittman to be US district judge for the Northern District of Texas, abortion-rights groups had already reminded her that he was anti-choice and anti-trans. She just didn’t listen. Pittman’s now set to hear a lawsuit from a former CVS employee who claims she was fired for refusing to prescribe contraceptives. She also voted to confirm US District Judge Sean D. Jordan just months after he’d filed an amicus brief in support of a pharmacy that refused to carry emergency contraceptives.

Sinema gave a thumb’s up and curtsy to Michael T. Liburdi, who’d written in support of the anti-choice Hobby Lobby’s infamous lawsuit. Ilyse Hogue, then president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called her out publicly for this one.

“Democratic Senators should be doing everything in their power to fight these efforts to stack courts against women and families,” Hogue said in a statement. “You can’t claim you are an advocate of women and our reproductive freedom just because you vote correctly on some legislation if, at the same time, you help elevate right-wing judges who will inflict long-term damage to our cause.”

Sinema had already established her pattern of spitting in the face of the groups and voters who put her in office. She’d continue supporting the worst of Trump’s nominees. This includes Wendy Williams Berger, who NARAL noted had helped prosecute a woman for manslaughter for delivering a stillborn. Berger argued that the woman’s past use of abortion care was evidence of her guilt. Then there’s Peter J. Phipps, who defended a policy that denied abortion care to undocumented young people in government custody, and Kenneth D. Bell, whom anti-abortion groups had actively supported during a past failed congressional campaign. He’d written op-eds that declared the abortion rights position “indefensible.”

Sinema voted to confirm Taylor B. McNeel in December 2020, when Trump was already defeated but couping. This May, McNeel refused to block Mississippi school officials from barring a trans girl from attending her graduation unless she “dressed like a boy.”

Joe Manchin voted to confirm roughly two-thirds of Trump’s deplorable nominees, including accused sexual predator Brett Kavanaugh, but abortion rights groups in particular never expected much from him. Sinema was elected to be an ally, and she’s disappointed us in every way possible. Let’s remember that next November.

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