Republicans accuse nominee Johnsen of supporting abortion rights but opposing motherhood

Republicans have made it clear they're opposed to the nomination of Dawn Johnsen to head the White House Office of Legal Counsel. They're unhappy with her support of abortion rights, but a recent blog posting made a surprising allegation: That she said motherhood was "involuntary servitude."

We wondered if she was really was so impolitic as to attack motherhood. And if so, does she have it in for apple pie as well?

The allegation came from the Web site of the House Republican Conference:

"At least 45 House Republicans have co-signed a letter to President Barack Obama in opposition to his nomination of Dawn Johnson [sic] for the head of the Office of Legal Counsel," the site says in a blog post . The post continued: "Her brazen pro-abortion stances [include] a Supreme Court amicus brief where she called motherhood 'involuntary servitude.'"

The Republicans are referring to a 1989 brief in Webster vs. Reproductive Health Services, a case that tested whether states could prohibit abortions in public health institutions. Johnsen was then legal director of the National Abortion Rights Action League, one of 77 organizations to sign the brief.

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stated on November 21, 2024 in social media posts

A woman holds a sign that says, “I want my daughter to have the right to abortion that I didn’t have.”

Footnote 23, part of the brief that Johnsen said in a Senate hearing that she wrote, said the following: "While a woman might choose to bear children gladly and voluntarily, statutes that curtail her abortion choice are disturbingly suggestive of involuntary servitude, prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment, in that forced pregnancy requires a woman to provide continuous physical service to the fetus in order to further the state's asserted interest. Indeed, the actual process of delivery demands work of the most intense and physical kind: labor of 12 or more grueling hours of contractions is not uncommon."

So Johnsen compared "forced pregnancy" — not motherhood — to involuntary servitude.

After we asked the Republican Conference about the claim, staffer Ericka Andersen acknowledged it was wrong. "You are correct that the post was written inaccurately," she told us in an e-mail. She corrected the post to say Johnsen "equated forced pregnancy with 'involuntary servitude.'"

Kudos to the conference for acknowledging the error. But we still find the original claim False.