Ashley Judd: Amy Coney Barrett’s Confirmation ‘Would Haul Us Back in Time’

Actress and left-wing activist Ashley Judd wrote at CNN that Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation to the Supreme Court would cause women’s equality to suffer and “haul us back in time.”

Judd spent much of her column grieving the loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG), writing that “RBG pioneered the interpretation of women’s equality under the Constitution.”

Ironically, Barrett herself, in her speech in which she accepted President Donald Trump’s nomination to the High Court, praised Ginsburg as someone who “not only broke glass ceilings—she smashed them.”

“For that she has won the admiration of women across the country and indeed all over the world,” Barrett said.

Judd continued in her op-ed that Ginsburg’s “towering jurisprudence” led Americans “over the course of decades” to “improve the system that was conceived of and designed to place women, especially women of color, below white, propertied men.”

However, the actress appears to have gone overboard in attributing women’s advances to Ginsburg that occurred before the late justice was even born:

Because of RBG, we now take for granted that women can open bank and checking accounts and apply for credit cards without a man signing for them. Women can rent apartments and buy homes. We can attend the colleges we choose. Modern womanhood is vastly different because of her.

In August 2014, the Guardian published a timeline that traced women’s financial rights from ancient societies to the present era.

The timeline notes that, in 1839, for example, Mississippi became the first state to allow women to own property in their own names.

In 1848, the Married Woman’s Property Act passed in New York, which, for the first time, allowed women to enter into their own contracts, collect rents, and file lawsuits on their own behalf.

In 1862, the U.S. Homestead Act made it “easier for single, widowed and divorced women to claim land in their own names,” the Guardian continued, adding:

In the same year, the California passed a law that established a state savings and loan industry that also guaranteed that a woman who made deposits in her own name was entitled to keep control of the money. The state recognized the full financial independence of women – and in 1862 the San Francisco Savings Union approved a loan to a woman.

For Judd, however, it is clear financial rights are not her real concern – it’s abortion.

“Many of us would also like to be able to plan our families and space the births of our children,” she wrote. “To have privacy from the state about if and when to terminate a pregnancy,” she added, stating she herself had been raped “by someone I had known since second grade.”

“Not only did I not want to bring the pregnancy to term, I did not want this rapist to have paternal rights, which were accorded to those accused of rape in many states – including the one where I was raped – unless there was a conviction,” she continued.

Judd provided her own warning about Barrett, the new woman on the scene:

Should Barrett be confirmed, she will have the chance to render enormously consequential decisions for American women for generations to come. Based on her record, we should be profoundly alarmed. Yesterday during her confirmation questioning, she had to be pressed before she would indicate that she believes in the peaceful transfer of power as laid out by the US Constitution.

Interestingly, Judd held up Democrat vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris (CA) as the new feminist icon to replace Ginsburg:

Sen. Harris, like Justice Ginsburg, is guided by her deep and abiding desire for justice and equality ‘for the people.’ No one can take RBG’s place, but certain women among us strive to follow her path.

…

Sen. Harris is a trusted leader, truth-teller, long-time champion for women and children, LGBTQ+ rights, voting rights and civil rights. I especially value her record fighting childhood sexual abuse. As Vice President, Kamala Harris will bring backbone, character, policy chops and the good, moral fight.

First, Judd appears to be confusing elected representatives of the people and Supreme Court Justices. Though progressives often seek to use the judiciary as a legislative body, neither Ginsburg nor Barrett sought election to office.

Second, though Judd portrayed an image of Harris as having a “record fighting childhood sexual abuse,” she clearly did not ask the alleged victims of childhood sexual abuse at the hands of priests of the Archdiocese of San Francisco.

During Harris’s tenure as San Francisco’s chief prosecutor, she failed to prosecute any of the sexual abuse claims brought against Catholic priests in the city, despite outcries from victim groups.

As Breitbart News senior contributor Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute, observed in his book titled Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite, during her 13-year tenure as district attorney and then attorney general, Harris failed to prosecute even one case of priest sexual abuse, though during that same period at least 50 major cities had brought charges against priests.

At the same time Harris failed to pursue prosecution of cases of priest sexual abuse, her office “would strangely hide vital records on abuses that had occurred,” Schweizer revealed.

The bombshell details show that while Harris’s predecessor, former San Francisco District Attorney Terence Hallinan, had launched an aggressive investigation into priests of the Archdiocese of San Francisco accused of sexual abuse, Harris’s campaign to unseat Hallinan showed an unusual influx of unparalleled donations from high-level officials of the Catholic Church.

In addition to campaign donations from multiple law firms defending San Francisco priests against abuse claims, Schweizer observed that “board members of San Francisco Catholic archdiocese-related organizations and their family members donated another $50,950 to Harris’s campaign.”

As the author noted, Harris’s ties to those working to block exposure of the archdiocese’s secret documents containing information about priests accused of sexual abuse were extensive.

Judd, however, appears to be fearful of Barrett, a woman described by Jennifer Braceras, director of the Independent Women’s Law Center and former member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, as “the living embodiment of the things that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent her career fighting for.”

In a column at InsideSources.com, Braceras expressed, “Like Ginsburg … Barrett is a brilliant scholar and jurist, admired by her colleagues not only for her sharp mind but for her humility and warmth.”

She noted, however, that “progressive feminists,” like Judd, “simply cannot accept a Court constrained by its constitutional role to say only what the law is, not what they want it to be.”

“Like Justice Ginsburg before her, Judge Barrett is an incredible role model for American women and girls,” Braceras argued, adding that while some will say Barrett doesn’t represent all women, “Neither did Ginsburg.”

“But justices are not nominated to represent anybody, they are nominated to apply the Constitution and ensure equal justice under law,” she asserted. “That is exactly what Amy Coney Barrett will do.”