The nomination of Richard Honaker to the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming is still awaiting a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee and we need Senator Feinstein’s vote to stop the nomination.

Honaker is a staunch anti-choice activist and someone who has also served for years as a Board member of a right-wing, anti-gay organization. He most certainly does not deserve a lifetime appointment as a powerful federal judge.

We’ve asked you to call Senator Feinstein’s D.C. office. Now please also call her state office nearest you. She and her staff need to keep hearing from constituents that she should vote NO on the Honaker nomination.

Find the state office closest to you here

Richard Honaker has worked vigorously to undermine women’s reproductive freedom. Mr. Honaker has written that abortion is “wrong, and no one should have the right to do what is wrong.” As a Wyoming state legislator, Mr. Honaker in 1991 introduced a bill entitled the “Human Life Protection Act” that would have prohibited abortion, except to protect a woman’s life or in cases of  incest or rape, but then only if the victim had reported the crime within five days of its occurrence — a highly unrealistic requirement in many instances.

He has a disturbing record on government neutrality toward religion and a legal philosophy that threatens church-state separation.  Mr. Honaker believes that the Bible is “true in law,” and has publicly disparaged non-”Judeo-Christians” as unable to sustain “political liberty.”

Mr. Honaker is a longtime board member of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) — an extreme right-wing, anti-gay organization that, despite its name, has taken liberty-restricting positions on a range of matters that have nothing to do with home-schooling. A report in Salon quoted one observer of the Christian right as noting that “HSLDA and similarly motivated organizations . . . are major players behind recent efforts to mandate creationist curriculum and attack environmental education, sex-education, and multicultural classroom material.” And HSLDA has created an “army of eager teen activists . . . called Generation Joshua,” to “help defeat the giants of abortion, same-sex marriage and judicial activism.”

Please call now and urge Senator Feinstein to do everything she can to OPPOSE the confirmation of Richard Honaker in Committee.

You can let us know how the call goes with our online call report form at http://pfaw.kintera.org/CallReport.

Why should you care about a federal judge in another state? As a judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming, Honaker’s bad decisions could be looked to by judges in other states as persuasive precedent, and thus could affect all Americans. Women’s rights advocates in Wyoming as well as leading national women’s rights organizations, including NOW, the National Women’s Law Center and NARAL Pro-Choice America, also oppose Mr. Honaker’s confirmation, as do many other groups, including Americans United For Separation of Church and State and the Alliance for Justice.

For more on Richard Honaker and source material for the statements contained here, please download PFAW’s letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in opposition to Mr. Honaker’s confirmation.

The California Coalition for Civil Rights sent Sen. Feinstein a letter yesterday asking her to oppose Richard Honaker’s nomination:

As one of only three district court judges in Wyoming, Mr. Honaker would wield considerable power over the people of the state if confirmed. He would also be eligible to sit by designation on the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Mr. Honaker’s work and writings cast doubt upon his ability to set aside his personal beliefs in order to respect established legal principles and the dictates of higher federal courts. His refusal to tender records of his legislative work shows disdain for transparency in government and disrespect for the Senate’s important role in the “advice and consent” process. Because Mr. Honaker has failed to demonstrate that he will respect the legal principles important to all Californians, and indeed, all Americans, we urge you to reject his nomination.

Read the full letter below:

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Visit the Credo Action website to send a letter to your Senator.

President Bush has nominated Richard Honaker for a lifetime appointment as a federal judge to the District Court in Wyoming. Richard Honaker has worked tirelessly to ban abortion and has publically stated that abortion is “wrong, and no one should have the right to do what is wrong.” Richard Honaker is one of Bush’s most anti-choice nominees to date and shouldn’t receive Senate confirmation.

As a representative in the Wyoming State Legislature, Honaker introduced the “Human Life Protection Act” in 1991. The act would have criminalized abortion from the moment of conception except in the cases of rape, incest, or to protect the woman’s life. Even women who were the victims of rape or incest would have been denied abortions unless they reported the incidents to the authorities within five days. When the act failed to pass, Honaker reintroduced it in 1992 and it was again defeated. In 1994, Honaker served as counsel to the Unseen Hands Prayer Circle, which formed to place the “Human Life Protection Act” on the statewide ballot.

In one year President Bush will be out of the White House. We must ensure that President Bush doesn’t get anymore of his anti-choice zealots on the federal bench. Tell your Senators to reject the nomination of Richard Honaker.

(For more information about the Honaker nomination, please visit the websites of NARAL Pro-Choice America and the Alliance for Justice.)

Visit the NARAL Pro-Choice America site to send a letter urging your Senator to oppose a fierce anti-choice nominee to the federal court:

As a constituent, I am writing to voice my strong opposition to the nomination of Richard Honaker to the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming.

Honaker has spent his career fighting to deny women access to safe, legal reproductive-health services. He publicly and actively opposes abortion, calling it equivalent to murder, and tried three times to ban abortion in Wyoming.

By nominating Richard Honaker to a lifetime judgeship, President Bush has shown yet again that he is totally out of step with the views of mainstream America. Honaker led the push for a ballot measure to ban abortion, which Wyoming voters resoundingly rejected. Now I urge you to do the same with this nomination.

Please refuse to consider this nomination and instead call on President Bush to fill the post with a fair-minded individual who shares America’s mainstream views of constitutional rights, including the constitutional right to choose.

As the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade approaches, so much hangs in the balance. Women’s access to safe, legal reproductive-health choices has been attacked repeatedly by the Bush administration.

Now is the time to stand up to Bush. Please affirm your commitment to the fundamental American values of freedom and privacy by rejecting the nomination of Richard Honaker today.

In a January 29, 2008, letter to Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate’s Committee on the Judiciary, Alliance for Justice president Nan Aron urges the committee to reject the nomination of Richard Honaker to the District Court for the District of Wyoming.

Dear Chairman Leahy:

Alliance for Justice urges the Senate to reject the nomination of Richard H. Honaker for the District Court for the District of Wyoming. Throughout his career, Honaker has actively worked to undermine a woman’s right to reproductive freedom.  We believe that his zealous advocacy for doing away with such a fundamental right, along with extreme statements he has made about the place of religion in American life, raises serious questions about his fitness for a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.

As a representative in the Wyoming State Legislature, Honaker introduced the “Human Life Protection Act” in 1991. The Act would have criminalized abortion from the moment of conception except in the cases of rape, incest, or to protect the woman’s life. Even women who were the victims of rape or incest would have been denied abortions unless they reported the incidents to the authorities within five days. When the Act failed to pass, Honaker reintroduced it in 1992 and it was again defeated. In 1994, Honaker served as counsel to the Unseen Hands Prayer Circle, which formed to place the “Human Life Protection Act” on the statewide ballot.

Honaker’s public statements and written work also raise serious concerns about his ability, if confirmed, to remain objective in cases in which Supreme Court precedent conflicts with his religious beliefs.

In 1992, Honaker wrote a series of two articles for The Reformed Herald about the cultural clash in the United States.  The articles included the following quotes:

·    I came to know that if the Bible is true, if Christianity is true, then it is true in family life. It is true in economics. It is true in law, and it is true in all facets of human endeavor.

·    The idea of neutrality relied upon the myth that law and government can function without relying upon shared moral premised. The upshot of neutrality was that some moral premises could be considered in the formulation of law and policy, but that Christian moral premises could not.

·    Autonomy is the new secular religion sanctioned by The United States Supreme Court. The Supreme Court no longer talks about America as a Christian nation or about the Christian underpinnings of the law. In moving even beyond the pale of neutrality, it openly advances the idea of autonomy, stating that “personal dignity and autonomy are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment.”

·    It doesn’t take a legal scholar to perceive that the nation’s highest court, its universities and law schools, its political institutions, and its news media, have moved racially [sic] away from a Christian base toward a secular base in which man, not God, is the creator of values, of rights, of law, and of justice. It is less clear to what degree these institutions reflect changes in views of the American people, changes in the state of the American mind - or to what degree the institutions of led the charge.

·    We are seeing vicious political battles over judicial appointments that would not have occurred had the Court not politicized itself by creating rights rather than construing them.

·    The secularists have successfully banished Christians from law, politics, and government, and they won’t want to let them back in. While it is “politically incorrect” to attack the most reprehensible, immoral conduct, and while it is “politically incorrect” to wish not to pay for obscene art, Christians are fair game.

I urge you to reject Richard Honaker’s nomination in favor of a more moderate nominee with a less troubling record on issues of fundamental importance to all Americans.

Sincerely,

Nan Aron
President