[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 192 (Tuesday, December 3, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Page S6818]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                     Nomination of Sarah E. Pitlyk

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I want to turn to the nomination that is 
pending before the Senate and that we will be voting on as soon as I 
finish my remarks.
  I have come to the floor many times to speak in opposition to 
President Trump's ideologically driven, deeply partisan judicial 
nominees and to express my frustration that under Republican 
leadership, the Senate is rubberstamping one lifetime judicial 
nomination after another. The Republican leaders have been willing to 
rubberstamp these nominees whose qualifications are in doubt. A record 
number have been deemed unqualified by the American Bar Association, 
whose impartiality is virtually nonexistent and who are, without a 
doubt, chosen for their commitment to upholding President Trump's 
agenda rather than to upholding our Nation's laws.
  These nominees have sided with shady for-profit colleges rather than 
with student loan borrowers--just like the President's Department of 
Education. President Trump's nominees have followed his footsteps on 
healthcare, ruling and speaking against expanding affordable healthcare 
to more families. They have allowed major corporations to skirt rules 
that are intended to help address the urgent threat of the climate 
crisis.
  Perhaps most consistently, President Trump's judicial nominees have 
adhered to rigid, backward, deeply harmful ideology when it comes to 
reproductive healthcare. One called Roe v. Wade ``radical abortion 
rights.'' Another pushed pseudoscience and claimed that birth control 
can lead to suicide.
  The vast majority of women and men in our country would agree that 
these are not positions you would want a supposedly impartial judge to 
espouse. Unfortunately, what I have just laid out pales in comparison 
to what we know of the judicial nominee we are considering today, Sarah 
Pitlyk.
  Ms. Pitlyk, whom the American Bar Association rated as 
``unqualified,'' has actively worked to erode women's access to birth 
control and abortion. She even defended legislation that would have 
allowed landlords to have evicted their tenants and employers to have 
fired their employees simply because they had used birth control or had 
gotten pregnant before they had gotten married.
  These views are already wildly invasive and disqualifying. 
Unfortunately, there is more.
  Ms. Pitlyk has also not only expressed her personal bias against 
assisted reproductive technology, or ART, but she has actually authored 
briefs that have argued that surrogacy and ART have ``grave effects on 
society.''
  I am very proud to have personally worked to expand access to in 
vitro fertilization, or IVF, especially for our military families who 
struggle with infertility, and I firmly believe all families who face 
this painful challenge should have our strong support.
  My good friend the junior Senator from Illinois, who has spoken 
powerfully about her struggles with fertility and how IVF gave her the 
opportunity to realize her dream of motherhood, wrote in a letter to 
our colleagues: ``As a mother who struggled with infertility for years 
and required IVF to start my family, I would be one of the many 
Americans who could never enter Ms. Pitlyk's courtroom with any 
reasonable expectation that my case would be adjudicated in a fair and 
impartial manner.''
  Given Ms. Pitlyk's record of supporting cruel policies that would 
punish women for accessing basic healthcare like birth control, her 
support for banning women from exercising their right to abortion, as 
well as her personal bias and professional actions against starting a 
family via assisted reproductive technology, I believe a vote in favor 
of Ms. Pitlyk's nomination would be indefensible.
  That is why I ask my colleagues on the Republican side to stop and 
really consider this vote. If confirmed, Ms. Pitlyk's tenure on the 
courts will last for decades--well beyond President Trump's last day in 
the White House. That would mean, for years and years, decisions would 
be made that we can only expect would harm women and families, restrict 
women's access to reproductive healthcare, and even potentially 
jeopardize their ability to become parents. In other words, a vote for 
Ms. Pitlyk now will keep hurting people long after the President's 
name-calling on Twitter doesn't drive headlines anymore.
  I urge all of my colleagues to do the right thing for women and 
families today and for years to come and join me in opposing this 
nomination on the floor.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________