By L.A. Williams
Christian Action League
October 7, 2020
Pro-life leaders praised Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, thanked President Trump for nominating her and urged Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) to continue to push for her confirmation during a press conference Tuesday at Romare Bearden Park in Charlotte.
Part of a five-state #ConfirmAmy tour across presidential and Senate battleground states, the event was organized by the national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List. SBA List President Marjorie Dannenfelser opened the press conference, which also featured Abby Johnson, former Planned Parenthood director who now leads “And Then There Were None;” Tami Fitzgerald, executive director of the North Carolina Values Coalition; and Brooke Larkin, regional coordinator for Students for Life of America.
In front of a group of activists, many holding signs supporting Barrett’s confirmation, Dannenfelser told the crowd that the nomination comes at a turning point in the nation’s history where America will have to decide whether to cherish the lives of the unborn or set them aside.
Dannenfelser called Barrett “supremely qualified” for the High Court.
“She draws praise from the people who disagree with her. The people who disagree with Amy Coney Barrett respect her and believe that she is a good judge,” Dannenfelser said. “What more could we ask for, someone who is highly qualified and a genuinely good person, to be on this court?”
Johnson echoed the sentiment, highlighting the frenzied outcry from Planned Parenthood and NARAL following Barrett’s Sept. 26 nomination.
“Amy Coney Barrett should be a mainstream feminist’s dream: a university professor and judge, highly educated and now nominated for our nation’s most powerful court. They should be celebrating her,” Johnson said. “She is the type of woman that Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for, a woman who truly has it all. Yet they vilify her. Why? Only one reason, because she has done all of this while rejecting the lie in her personal life that a woman can only be successful if she embraces abortion.”
Johnson said mainstream feminists are singularly focused on abortion.
“It is not about equal pay, it is not even about equal rights for women. It is only about abortion,” she said.
A Planned Parenthood clinic director until 11 years ago, Johnson reminded the crowd of how medical science has advanced in the last half-century and of ways in which research has revealed the destructive nature of abortion even beyond the death of the child.
“We have learned exponentially more about the unborn child. We have ultrasound technology. We know about fetal pain. We know that children have dreams in the womb and that they can hear their mother’s voices before they are born,” she said. “We know now of the longterm emotional effects that abortion has on women. We know she has higher rates of depression, eating disorders and anxiety. We know she is six times more likely to commit suicide. That certainly doesn’t sound pro-woman to me.”
Johnson urged the crowd to vote early and with the nation’s most vulnerable citizens in mind.
Fitzgerald followed suit with praise for the president’s nominee and for North Carolina’s junior senator.
“Not only is our president one of the most pro-life presidents, but Senator Tillis is one of the most pro-life senators with a 100 percent pro-life voting record,” she said.
Fitzgerald said Barrett is the right nominee at the right time and reminded the crowd of her work as a law professor and a judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, for which she was confirmed with a bipartisan vote.
“In fact, some of her colleagues from around the country urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to confirm her and described her work as ‘rigorous, fair-minded, respectful and constructive,’” Fitzgerald said.
“We want to thank Amy Coney Barrett for being that woman who models for the rest of us what success looks like: serving God first, then serving her family and then exercising her skills as a lawyer and as a judge to help save our country.”
Each speaker pointed out that Barrett had managed to become an accomplished judge even while being a wife and a mother of seven, including two children adopted from Haiti and one with special needs.
“President Trump has nominated not only a qualified judge but an accomplished and principled scholar and devout mother,” said Larkin, the final speaker of the day.
“This nomination was the constitutional obligation of our president, and now it is that same constitutional obligation of our elected senators to confirm her.”