Louisiana’s Wendy Vitter is giving professional racist Thomas Farr of North Carolina a run for his money in the contest for Most Deplorable Judicial Nominee. She’s not sure that the Supreme Court got it right when they banned racial segregation in schools, and she’s willing to say anything to advance her anti-choice agenda, true or not.
Vitter’s been an anti-abortion activist for decades. She’s not one of those whose views respect science and judicial reality, either: she claims birth control kills, abortion causes cancer, and unconstitutional limitations on abortion are praiseworthy. That trifecta alone disqualifies her from holding any office that requires independence, impartiality, and integrity.
According to a YouTube video posted in November 2013, Vitter led a panel entitled “Abortion Hurts Women's Health” at a Right to Life Louisiana event. One of the panel’s speakers was the anti-abortion activist Angela Lanfranchi, who told attendees that abortion increases women’s risk for breast cancer — despite the fact that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has found no causal link between abortion and a woman’s risk for breast cancer.
In the video, Lanfranchi also encouraged panel attendees to take at look at her brochure entitled “The Pill Kills.” That brochure claims women on the contraceptive pill are more likely to die a violent death, because they are more likely to cheat on their male partners, to face fertility problems, to have unhealthy children, and to have poor relationships with their partners. The brochure concludes, “It is not unreasonable to suspect that such effects could also influence rates of intimate partner violence.”
After Lanfranchi spoke, however, Vitter told attendees to pick up one of her brochures.
According to Vitter, Planned Parenthood kills “150,000 females” each year, a statement she’s declined to rescind or clarify.
Her brand of anti-choice zealotry would be particularly devastating on the federal bench in Louisiana, which ranks 46th among states for reproductive rights, and 49th for women’s health and well-being.