Nominees John Ashcroft, for Attorney General, and Tommy Thompson, for Secretary of Health and Human Services, stand for some of the most regressive policies on the ultra-conservatives' agenda.

Ashcroft would ban birth control pills and IUDs, deny emergency contraception to a woman who's been raped and force a girl, pregnant from incest, to bear a child, even at the risk of her health. As Wisconsin governor Thompson signed an abortion procedures ban like the one the U.S. Supreme Court–before any Bush additions--found unconstitutionally deceptive and dangerous.

While women need the right to birth control and abortion, we also need to be able realistically to have and raise children. That means equal opportunity and affirmative action; good jobs and equal pay; freedom from harassment, discrimination, hate crimes and other violence; government that provides programs--for the poor and the sick, people with disabilities, the very young and the very old–equally to all.

Confirmation of Ashcroft and Thompson would mean putting these dreams on hold and could mean a rude awakening in their next elections for Senators who vote "yes".

Ashcroft, who opposed the Equal Rights Amendment, used his position as Missouri attorney general to try to deny NOW's first amendment rights to call a boycott of states that had not ratified the ERA. He pursued his lawsuit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Thompson engineered punitive welfare policies that hurt poor woman and families and increased poverty and hunger in Wisconsin.

Both Ashcroft and Thompson would turn over tax money--including public education funds–to religious institutions' programs, without adequate protection against proselytizing and discrimination. Do we want public funds to flow to a homeless shelter that won't employ Jews and because of its religious affiliation isn't required to do so? Should a tax-supported, Methodist-run daycare center be able to exclude Moslem children? What about a Baptist drug treatment program that uses its tax funding to hire men only?

Neither nominee fights discrimination based on sexual orientation. Both have flawed records on issues of race.

The majority of voters in this country, especially women voters, reject the agenda of religious and political extremists. NOW joins feminist and women's organizations with millions of constituents all across the country in calling on U.S. Senators to reject the nominations of Ashcroft and Thomas.