Survivors of sexual violence deserve a better Supreme Court justice than Amy Coney Barrett

Nationally, we’ve just hit more than 210,000 COVID-19-related deaths in this country. Nearly 1,500 of those deaths were Iowans: our friends, our family, and our neighbors. Our state’s hospitalization count for COVID-19 patients is at an all-time high. We need a comprehensive COVID-19 package from Congress — and we need it now.

Yet instead of focusing on the needs of Iowans during this devastating pandemic, Sens. Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst have made it clear that they are moving full steam ahead to fast track a problematic Supreme Court nominee less than a month before Election Day.

The nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, holds extreme positions on areas of the law on which victims of sexual assault depend, and we cannot afford the drastic upending of these support systems. Survivors deserve and depend upon comprehensive health care services, Title IX protections, and full access to reproductive healthcare that Barrett’s confirmation would threaten to overturn.

Barrett has criticized the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act. Yet victims of sexual violence benefit greatly from the progress made to ensure access to health care and health insurance, as well as protection from discrimination based on pre-existing conditions.

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Victims need access to a range of health care services in both the immediate aftermath of sexual violence and over the span of their lives. These services include physical and mental health care to heal from sexual violence and mitigate the many consequences of resulting trauma. From the forensic rape exam to ongoing visits with a primary care physician or counselor — health care is of critical importance to victims of sexual violence. It enables them to cope with the myriad effects of trauma and to thrive in their lives and in their families, workplaces, schools, and larger communities.

Barrett’s views on Title IX are also troubling. Survivors want and deserve a Supreme Court that works for all of us, yet a previous ruling from Barrett made it easier for students who are held accountable for sexual assault to sue their schools for sex discrimination. She suggested that a school’s commitment to taking sexual misconduct seriously is evidence of sex discrimination against the people who caused harm. This is deeply problematic and troubling for survivors.

Reproductive health care, including emergency contraception and abortion, is another place where Barrett comes up short. Every area of a victim’s life is affected by sexual violence, whether it is a child sexually abused by a family member, a teenager coerced into sex by an older adult, a college student drugged and assaulted at a party, or an adult raped by a stranger or by an ex-partner.

Victim advocates in Iowa bear witness to the trauma of sexual violence every day and see the torment caused by the loss of power and control over one’s body — one’s most intimate self — that is at the heart of sexual violence. For these reasons, the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault advocates for the availability of the full range of access to reproductive health care for victims of sexual assault whether or not they have reported their experiences.

The Senate must be very careful in its work to fill the seat of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Based on these disagreements on key policy issues, the coalition respectfully raises grave concerns to Grassley and Ernst about moving forward with the confirmation of Barrett to the Supreme Court. Survivors deserve better than this nominee.

Beth Barnhill has been executive director position for the Iowa Coalition Against Sexual Assault since 1990. In her role she serves on a number of state boards and committees addressing issues of sexual violence. She is a founding member and past chair of the Iowa Board for the Treatment of Sexual Abusers, and a founding board member of the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence.