Accountable.US Statement on Trump Judicial Nominees Joshua Divine and Maria Lanahan Steamrolling Missouri Voters and Advancing a Statewide Abortion Ban

Washington D.C. – This week, Missouri’s Supreme Court halted access to reproductive health care across the state – just months after Missourians passed a ballot initiative specifically protecting reproductive freedom. The ruling is not only the latest chapter in the battle between Missouri courts and Missouri voters over individual rights – it also reflects the extreme record of two particular Missouri officials who Trump recently nominated for lifetime appointments to the federal bench: Joshua Divine and Maria Lanahan. This latest setback for reproductive rights comes at the behest of the Missouri Attorney General’s office, including Divine and Lanahan, who specifically asked the Missouri Supreme Court to vacate a lower court’s preliminary injunction that would have paused strict anti-abortion laws, in light of the successful statewide ballot measure. Accountable.US President Caroline Ciccone issued the following statement in response to the decision:

“Missouri voters spoke loud and clear when they approved a constitutional amendment ensuring a woman’s right to make their own reproductive health care decisions. Now, Trump judicial nominees Joshua Divine and Maria Lanahan are leading the charge to overturn the will of Missourians and eliminate their fundamental freedoms. Make no mistake: Divine and Lanahan have a proven track record of using the courts to advance Trump’s far-right ideological agenda, and they cannot be trusted to rule impartially. Every Senator should know that if they vote to confirm Divine and Lanahan, it will be a rubber stamp for Trump’s out-of-touch agenda. After years of conservatives stressing that Roe should be overturned to ‘let states decide,’ it is especially ironic and disconcerting to see two early judicial nominees do the exact opposite once the people of the state actually decide to protect reproductive rights.”

An Accountable.US report has also revealed that Divine and Lanahan are at the center of a lawsuit to revive a case seeking to remove the FDA’s science-based and decades-long approval of medication abortion. In the case, Divine and Lanahan have absurdly argued that states are being harmed by fewer teen pregnancies because loss of potential population caused “diminishment of political representation” and “loss of federal funds.”

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