Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dead

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WASHINGTON (ChurchMilitant.com) - Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away Friday at home. She was 87.

The Supreme Court issued a press release announcing she had passed from complications from metastatic pancreatic cancer.

The High Court's oldest member, Ginsburg was appointed in 1993 by Democrat president Bill Clinton, serving on the Supreme Court for 27 years. She belonged solidly to the liberal bloc, consistently ruling in favor of advancing abortion and the LGBT agenda.

Ginsburg's death has increased the election's stakes by a hundredfold. The Supreme Court battle over who sits next in her seat is expected to eclipse that of Justice Brett Kavanaugh after he was nominated to take the place of Catholic retired justice — and pro-homosexual activist — Anthony Kennedy in 2018.

"This confirmation process has become a national disgrace," Kavanaugh said during his highly contentious confirmation hearings, where he was accused by Christine Blasey Ford of standing by while she was sexually assaulted — allegations that were later contradicted by the evidence.

"There has been a frenzy on the Left to come up with something, anything, to oppose my nomination," he said.

Ginsburg's passing under a Trump presidency is the realization of liberals' worst fears. If the president successfully appoints another conservative justice to the High Court bench, the conservative bloc will solidly outnumber the liberal bloc 6–3 — spelling the potential end of Roe v. Wade after half a century on the books.

The loss of Ginsburg's critical and reliably pro-abortion vote in any new ruling on Roe v. Wade will be a vote the Left will not give up without an intense fight.

Liberals had pressured the three-time cancer survivor to retire under Obama, hoping for a Democrat-appointed replacement favorable to abortion and gay rights. But Ginsburg showed no interest in leaving the bench, saying in 2017, "I will do this job as long as I can do it full steam."

Under Trump, the GOP changed the rules for cloture, changing the requirement from a supermajority to a simple majority of 51 votes to end a filibuster — which is what took place during the confirmation hearings for Justice Neil Gorsuch. Thus a Democratic attempt at filibuster in the next confirmation process is unlikely to succeed.

With Republicans retaining a majority of 53 in the Senate to the Democrats' 45 — unless three Republicans defect — Trump's nominee is expected to have the votes to sail through.

This means the Democrats may have to find other ways to tank the nominee, e.g., surfacing old sexual assault allegations, as they did with Kavanaugh, in the hopes of getting the nominee disqualified, until Trump appoints a "moderate" soft on abortion, whom the Left believes does not pose a threat to Roe.

They could also try to run out the clock, insisting that the vacancy not be filled until after the election — with the hopes that it will result in their candidate, Joe Biden, becoming the new president. This is precisely what Democrat senator Charles Schumer is suggesting, tweeting: "The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice."

But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised to move forward quickly on Trump's nominee, announcing that his pick "will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate."

Pro-Abortion, Pro-LGBT Track Record

A self-described feminist long before coming to the Supreme Court, Ginsburg was encouraged by the anti-Trump Women's March on Washington, D.C. on Jan. 21, 2017.

"I've never seen such a demonstration — both the numbers and the rapport of the people in that crowd," she said. "So, yes, we are not experiencing the best times, but there is reason to hope that we will see a better day."

Ginsburg made clear she was no fan of Trump, once calling him a "faker" with "an ego" and "no consistency" about him." After criticism, she apologized for what she called "ill-advised" remarks.

"Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office," the statement read. "In the future I will be more circumspect."

Signaling her vote in the highly anticipated 2015 case Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex "marriage," Ginsburg officiated a gay wedding one month before the ruling was handed down.

Ginsburg was slammed in 2009 and again in 2014 for promoting what seemed to be eugenics against "unwanted" populations.

In a comment to The New York Times, she said, "Frankly I had thought that at the time [Roe v. Wade] was decided there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of."

And in 2014, she remarked to Elle Magazine, "It makes no sense as a national policy to promote birth only among poor people."

Her critics noted the longtime link between abortion advocacy and eugenics, its most notable proponent Margaret Sanger, whose Birth Control League morphed into Planned Parenthood, and who regularly associated with the American Eugenics Society and corresponded with the architect of Hitler's Nazi eugenics program.

Of Jewish descent, Ginsburg was born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, and went on to excel at academics, graduating at the top of her class at Cornell University in 1954. She was one among only nine female students at Harvard Law School in 1956, and was the first woman named to the Harvard Law Review.

She went on to become the first female professor at Columbia University to earn tenure, going on to direct the feminist Women's Rights Project for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the 1970s.

Her first judicial appointment came in 1980, when Democrat president Jimmy Carter named her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. She served there until her Supreme Court appointment in 1993.

Hospitalizations

Ginsburg has struggled with illness and injury in recent years, with multiple hospitalizations.

On July 17, Ginsburg underwent chemotherapy treatments for a recurrence of cancer. At the time she made clear she would not be retiring, and that she was "fully able" to continue her role on the High Court. The week before that, she had been hospitalized for an infection at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, undergoing an "endoscopic procedure to clean out a bile duct stent that was placed last August."

She was hospitalized over a gallstone infection in May, receiving nonsurgical treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital. She was also hospitalized twice in November 2019, after contracting a stomach virus. In Nov. 2018, she landed in the hospital after a fall and fracturing three ribs.

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