Amy Coney Barrett Is My Hero And She Should Be Yours Too

Amy Coney Barret is a personal hero of mine. She was not a hero of mine before she entered the national discussion as a contender and now nominee for the Supreme Court of the United States. Admittedly, I did not follow the federal judiciary close enough to know one Justice from another. But now that she has been nominated and she has entered my world view, it’s important that to me that we not only praise her as Trump’s nominee but also as a personal hero to millions of American women. 

Unlike Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sonya Sotomeyer and the other female justices before her, Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination was not met with joyous celebration on the basis of her being female.  The left of course can’t stand her ideology and therefore has no interest in her as a woman since their feminism lives and dies by convenience to their own causes.

For the most part, conservatives were glad to have nominated a woman only because it allowed us to avoid the disastrous charade of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Conservatives don’t play identity politics like the left so the right-wing was mostly happy about Barrett’s nomination because of her judicial record and conservative ideology not because of her gender or personal background. This is a good thing! 

But I wanted to take a moment for conservative Christian women in America to celebrate Justice Barrett as a woman who is like us; who will be our reflection on the highest court in the land. There has never been a woman like us on the court before and its exciting to see one of our own rise to the top to look out for us.

Amy is a woman who is like me (and most of my friends). Like me she is a devout Christian woman who is unabashed and unafraid in her faith. She makes no apologies for it. She doesn’t do the whole “I’m spiritual” or “I’m a Christian but I celebrate all religions.” Tolerance of other religions is obviously critical and I assume Amy, like me, is very tolerant of all faiths – but its not actually a caveat to your faith. You can be a Christian and just stand strong and say it with out all the hedging. And that is who Amy is and its who I am.

Further – she is a woman of family. Amy and I both see family as a well of love which never runs dry. I have always been drawn to the idea of adopting my future family and feel called by God to this path. I believe my future child is a child who may not be born from my womb but will be mine to love all the same. Millions of American women cannot bear children or have extreme difficulty but have the deep desire and call from God to motherhood. And hundreds of thousands of women per year are desperate, sick or otherwise in need of a human solution to the fact that they may not be able to care for their child be they born, raised, or unborn. Like me and like millions of American women, Amy saw those two facts as perfectly married to a solution of love and family. 

Amy, like me, is also a highly educated and driven woman who put her career at the top of her priorities list but never gave up on love and home. Before she was 30 years old, Amy Coney had clerked for a Supreme Court Justice (the great Justice Antonin Scalia). Most lawyers are lucky to have clerked for a Supreme Court Justice in their lifetime let alone at age 25. She didn’t find love and marry until she was in her late 20s. Before her first child came into her life, she had already clerked for the Supreme Court, worked on one of the most famous and important election cases in American history (Bush v Gore 2000), and been hired as a law professor at one of the most prestigious law schools in the country (Notre Dame – her daughter is 18 and she was hired in 2002 so she was probably pregnant when she got hired there). She quite literally had it all before she was even considered a national name. I definitely don’t have it all yet (at age 30) but she makes me believe there is still time and maybe I could.

Amy is not the only woman or the only conservative woman or the only woman of faith to serve on the court. But she is the first woman whose values reflect mine in a way that makes me see myself and my friends in her. While I think we should celebrate our political personalities by achievements and ideas – it inspires me that someone so similar could go so far. And it reminds me of all my fellow conservative women and what we carry on our shoulders with almost no other circle but our own to celebrate us for it. We may still be lectured, disregarded and reviled by our liberal sisters but our conservative brothers are with us celebrating achievement, faith and family as no longer mutually exclusive for women of like minds.

On the day Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, so will be the true legacy of feminism. And I pray to God that some day my child looks at me the way Amy’s daughter looks at her.