{"id":29497,"date":"2020-09-26T13:26:53","date_gmt":"2020-09-26T17:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=29497"},"modified":"2020-09-26T13:26:53","modified_gmt":"2020-09-26T17:26:53","slug":"its-official-trump-selects-the-extremely-pro-life-anti-abortion-jurist-amy-coney-barrett-thank-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=29497","title":{"rendered":"IT’S OFFICIAL! Trump selects the extremely Pro Life, Anti-Abortion Jurist Amy Coney Barrett—THANK GOD!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amy Coney Barrett: Mother of 7, woman of faith, who says religion has no place in rulings<\/h1>\n

By Bruce Golding
\nNew York Post<\/p>\n

\"Judge<\/div>\n
Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Matt Cashore\/University of Notre Dame Law School via EPA<\/span><\/div>\n

Judge Amy Coney Barrett is a wife, mother of seven and a devout Catholic \u2014 but how that may affect\u00a0the presumptive nominee\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0potential rulings on the Supreme Court remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

Reportedly tapped by President Trump to replace the late\u00a0US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Ginsburg<\/a>, the 48-year-old jurist has only sat on the federal bench for three years, after being successfully nominated by Trump to the Chicago-based 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s written more than 100 decisions and dissents,\u00a0according to the Chicago Tribune<\/a>. And while she maintains that her faith does not enter into her rulings on the law, Barrett twice joined with a minority of judges in dissenting opinions that favored reconsidering rulings that struck down state restrictions on abortion rights.<\/p>\n

One case involved an Indiana law that would have required that the parents be notified when minors seek consent for the procedure from the courts, while the other \u2014 also passed in Indiana, her home state \u2014 banned abortions for reasons related to gender, race or disability, and also required that fetal remains be buried or cremated.<\/p>\n

Although the Hoosier State only appealed the decision regarding fetal remains, Barrett and the other dissenters addressed the law\u2019s other provisions, noting that \u201cthere is a difference between \u2018I don\u2019t want a child\u2019 and \u2018I want a child, but only a male,\u2019 or \u2018I want only children whose genes predict success in life.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cUsing abortion to promote eugenic goals is morally and prudentially debatable,\u201d the dissenters argued.<\/p>\n

\"Judge<\/a>
Judge Amy Coney BarrettRachel Malehorn via AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both of those cases later wound up before the Supreme Court, which reinstated Indiana\u2019s regulation of fetal remains and ordered a reconsideration of its parental-notification law.<\/p>\n

The hot-button abortion issue also featured prominently during Barrett\u2019s confirmation hearing for her seat on the 7th Circuit, which reviews rulings from federal district courts in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.<\/p>\n

Liberal Democratic senators grilled Barrett \u2014 whose children include two adopted from Haiti and one with Down syndrome \u2014 on how her religious beliefs might affect her rulings, citing an article she co-wrote in 1998 for the Marquette Law Review that said the Catholic Church\u2019s \u201cprohibitions against abortion and euthanasia (properly defined) are absolute.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe dogma lives loudly within you, and that\u2019s of concern when you come to big issues that people have fought for for years in this country,\u201d Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California) told Barrett.<\/p>\n

But when Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) asked when it would be \u201cproper for a judge to put their religious views above applying the law,\u201d Barrett answered, \u201cNever.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s never appropriate for a judge to impose that judge\u2019s personal convictions, whether they derive from faith or anywhere else, on the law,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Following the hearing, Barrett was confirmed by the Senate in a near-party-line vote, 55-43.<\/p>\n

But her reported membership in People of Praise, an ecumenical Christian community, has fueled Democrats\u2019 doubts. The group was one of many established in the wake of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s to encourage the Catholic laity to follow the early Christians and form small communities for prayer and mutual support.<\/p>\n

\"Amy<\/a>
Amy Coney Barrett speaks at a confirmation hearing in 2017.\u00a0 C-SPAN<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Critics have characterized People of Praise as a conservative cult that subjugates women \u2014 in part because of its past use of the biblical term \u201chandmaid\u201d for its female leaders.<\/p>\n

But the group and others like it are well within the mainstream of Catholic practice, defenders say, and have been given the blessing of every pope \u2014 including the progressive Pope Francis, who\u00a0recently named a People of Praise member<\/a>\u00a0an auxiliary bishop in Portland, Ore.<\/p>\n

Barrett also issued a dissenting opinion in a gun-rights case last year, when she supported a challenge to federal and state laws that bar people convicted of felonies from owning firearms.<\/p>\n

Barrett said the laws shouldn\u2019t apply to the owner of an orthopedic footwear company who pleaded guilty to mail fraud unless there was proof he was actually violent, arguing that the Second Amendment \u201cconfers an individual right, intimately connected with the natural right of self-defense and not limited to civic participation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHistory is consistent with common sense: it demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut that power extends only to people who are dangerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

That led the conservative\u00a0National Review<\/a>\u00a0magazine to call Barrett a \u201cchampion of originalism,\u201d the theory that the Constitution should be interpreted as the framers intended at the time.<\/p>\n

One of the most ardent advocates of that idea was Justice Antonin Scalia, who hired Barrett, a graduate of Notre Dame Law School, for a prestigious clerkship during 1998 and 1999.<\/p>\n

That followed an earlier job Barrett had clerking for DC Circuit Court Judge Laurence Silberman, a former official in the Nixon and Ford administrations.<\/p>\n

She later spent two years in private practice in Washington, DC, and a year as an adjunct faculty member and fellow at George Washington University Law School, then returned to Notre Dame as a law professor in 2002.<\/p>\n

While at the school Barrett was a member of \u201cFaculty for Life,\u201d an anti-abortion group on campus.<\/p>\n

Barrett spent 15 years there and won the support of 450 former students and all 49 fellow professors when Trump nominated her to the 7th Circuit bench.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have a wide range of political views, as well as commitments to different approaches to judicial methodology and judicial craft,\u201d her colleagues wrote.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are united, however, in our judgment about Amy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Judge<\/a>
Judge Amy Coney Barrett with her husband Jesse Barrett.\u00a0 Julian Velasco<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Born in New Orleans, Barrett is one of seven children raised by Mike Coney, a former Shell oil lawyer, and his wife Linda, a homemaker.<\/p>\n

She attended the all-girls St. Mary\u2019s Dominican High School in New Orleans and was an English major at tiny Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee, where she was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and graduated with high honors.<\/p>\n

Barrett won a full-tuition scholarship to study law at Notre Dame,\u00a0according to SCOTUSblog<\/a>, and was executive editor of the school\u2019s law review before graduating with highest honors.<\/p>\n

While at Notre Dame, she also met her future husband, Jesse Barrett, who later spent 13 years as a federal prosecutor in Indiana and last year joined the South Bend firm of SouthBank Legal: LaDue Curran Kuehn as a partner.<\/p>\n

In 2018, Barrett was reportedly among three candidates who made the president\u2019s shortlist to replace Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy after the jurist announced his retirement at age 81.<\/p>\n

\"Photos<\/a>
Photos of Amy Coney Barrett hang in the Hall of Fame of
\nRhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.\u00a0 Karen Pulfer\/Reuters<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

New York Sen. Chuck Schumer blasted Barrett at the time, deriding her as an activist judge who would overturn abortion rights and Obamacare.<\/p>\n

\u201cJudge Barrett has given every indication that she will be an activist judge on the Court. If chosen as the nominee, she will be the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and to strike down pre-existing conditions protections in the ACA,\u201d\u00a0he said in a July 2018 tweet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But Barrett\u2019s White House interview didn\u2019t go well,\u00a0NPR reported<\/a>\u00a0this week, citing a source who said she had to wear dark glasses due to a case of conjunctivitis and was \u201cnot at her best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump ultimately nominated Brett Kavanaugh, then a DC Circuit judge, who was confirmed by a narrow 50-48 margin following a grueling, four-day hearing during which he emotionally denied Christine Blasey Ford\u2019s allegation that he sexually assaulted her while drunk at a party when they were teenagers.<\/p>\n

Barrett was considered all but a shoo-in for a nomination to the high court should Ginsburg\u2019s seat become vacant, however, following a\u00a0report last year in Axios<\/a>\u00a0that quoted Trump\u2019s comments to confidants while discussing Kennedy\u2019s replacement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m saving her for Ginsburg,\u201d Trump said in remarks confirmed this week by NPR.<\/p>\n

Amy Coney Barrett facts<\/h2>\n