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The attorneys have battled life-saving legislation, clerked for radically pro-abortion justices, defended establishment media, and engaged in a conspiracy to oust former President Donald Trump from office.
(LifeSiteNews) — A duo of attorneys slated to argue the pro-abortion side in the crucial Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health case on the U.S. Supreme Court docket will come to the Court with a pedigree of radical left-wing political involvement and anti-life activism.
Between them, the lawyers have fought to obliterate life-saving legislation, clerked for radically pro-abortion justices, served as legal counsel for an establishment media conglomerate, and worked directly on the conspiracy to oust former President Donald Trump from office over his alleged collusion with Russia in the 2016 election, a conspiracy theory which has since been debunked.
Their radical political affiliations could have a strong bearing on how they argue in the monumental abortion case in the Supreme Court when oral arguments begin December 1.
Widely recognized by both pro-life and pro-abortion advocates as having the potential to overturn existing legal precedent treating pre-viability abortion as a “constitutional right,” Dobbs v. Jackson concerns Mississippi’s HB 1510 law which bans abortions later than 15 weeks gestation for any reason other than physical medical emergencies or severe fetal abnormalities.
The Supreme Court had announced in May it would hear the case, and has since received a deluge of amicus briefs which have called upon the Court to overturn both Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992), the landmark cases which established and affirmed the “constitutional right” to abortion throughout the U.S.
The lead counsel in the case against overturning Roe and Casey is Julie Rikelman, Litigation Director for the Center for Reproductive Rights (CRR), who has spent much of her career fighting to eliminate protections for unborn babies.
According to a profile published on the CRR website, Rikelman has held her current position since 2012, a year after she re-joined the Center as a Senior Staff Attorney in 2011 following a stint as Vice President of Litigation at establishment media conglomerate NBC Universal.
Prior to that, Rikelman was a Blackmun Fellow with CRR from 1999–2001. The fellowship was named after Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun who authored the Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade.
In her role leading the litigation against pro-life laws, Rikelman is credited with “developing an innovative legal strategy,” claiming that laws requiring women to obtain ultrasounds to see their growing baby prior to getting an abortion violate the First Amendment.
The CRR litigation director has also been directly involved in trying to keep Jackson Women’s Health — the abortion clinic named in the Supreme Court case and Mississippi’s last remaining abortion facility — open despite pro-life legislation in the state.
A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, Rikelman had clerked for Dana Fabe of the Supreme Court of Alaska, who ruled in 2016 that abortionists need not notify parents before doing abortion procedures on minors.
