Only Ten?
By Blogger and commentator Heather Wokusch lists the top-ten worst Bush appointees for reproductive health and rights — the people whose noses Bush has allowed to intrude most into your bedroom.
Her choices are spot-on. Among them: Tom Coburn, the then-Representative (now senator) who believes that doctors who perform abortions should be executed and whom Bush appointed to the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA); Lester Crawford and Norris Alderson, whom Bush appointed to run the FDA and who held up the approval of over-the-counter emergency contraception; and Eric Keroack and Susan Orr, Bush’s choices to head the Population Affairs office in the department of health and human services, the department that controls Title X funding for reproductive health services for poor women.
The only nit I’ll pick with Wokusch’s list is this: she’s got Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito as 6 and 7, respectively. While they might not be the most patently offensive choices (at least they are qualified for their posts, as opposed to Keroack), it’s clear to me that their appointments will have the longest-lasting and potentially most-destructive impacts on reproductive justice. Already we have seen their power in the Court’s decision in Gonzales v. Carhart. If this top-ten (or ten-worst) takes any account of the magnitude of impact of these appointees, seems to me that Alito and Roberts should be at the tippy-top.