It was back in January — eons ago in the context of 2020 news — that Donald Trump became the first U.S. president to appear at the annual March for Life. At last month’s Republican National Convention, a conservative nun named Sister Deirdre “Dede” Byrne called Trump “the most pro-life president that this nation has ever had.”

This brings us to now and the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

The expectation is that Trump will put forth a nominee — a shortlist that sees Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the frontrunner — that has a record of being opposed to America’s post-Roe v. Wade abortion laws. That will inflame activists on the cultural left and exacerbate tensions in this country following the pandemic and protests surrounding racial injustice.

The focus on abortion will, once again, challenge journalists to produce balanced, accurate, on-the-record material describing the religious beliefs of the potential nominees.

How will this affect the final weeks of the 2020 campaign? Attacks from some Democrats on Barrett during the confirmation process, should she be the nominee, could very well help Trump with some Catholic voters. In turn, attacks on Barrett would hurt Biden, a Catholic trying to get Catholic swing voters in Pennsylvania and Ohio to vote for him. If anything, anti-Catholic attacks against Barrett could both galvanize GOP voters and tip some undecided Catholic voters across the Rust Belt toward Trump.

The 48-year-old Barrett, a native of New Orleans, and her husband Jesse Barrett, a former prosecutor, have seven children, including two adopted from Haiti and one with Down syndrome. Barrett learned of her son’s diagnosis during a prenatal test, but decided to have the baby. Aside from being a federal judge, Barrett teaches law at Notre Dame. She is a former law clerk to the late Justice Antonin Scalia, with The New York Times reporting that her fellow clerks saying she was his favorite. She graduated from Notre Dame Law School and joined the faculty in 2002.

If nominated and confirmed, Barrett would be the youngest member of the Supreme Court in history and, thus, could help shape many future decisions. For now, Trump has said he will announce his nominee at the end of this week following Ginsburg’s funeral.

Barrett would become the sixth Catholic on the nine-seat Court should she attain Senate confirmation, a potentially long and contentious process given where this country now finds itself politically.

“ACB” — as some have started to call her after it started trending on Twitter over the weekend — is a favorite among cultural and religious conservatives. In 2017, Barrett became a celebrity among Christians when some Democrats questioned her public statements and Catholicism during confirmation hearing for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago.

“You have a long history of believing that your religious beliefs should prevail,” California Sen. Dianne Feinstein told her during the hearing process. “The dogma lives loudly within you.”

As a result, the phrase “the dogma lives loudly within you” became a badge of honor for some Americans (akin to Hillary Clinton’s comments in 2016 calling Trump supporters “deplorables”) who proudly wore T-shirts with the phrase on it.

Is this what journalists and readers can expect from the Judiciary Committee members should Barrett be nominated and go through the confirmation process?

Ginsburg, who was Jewish, died on Sept. 18 at the age of 87. She is remembered most for being a pioneer of women’s rights. Nominated by President Bill Clinton in 1993, Ginsburg was, for a time, the only female justice. By 2010, she became the de facto leader of a four-justice liberal bloc after the Supreme Court split 5-4 along ideological lines — often sparring with her friend Scalia, one of the most conservative members who died in 2016.

Ginsburg became a rock star among political progressives over the last decade, earning the affectionate nickname “The Notorious RBG.”

CONTINUE READING “Catholics Could Be Energized For Trump Should He Nominate Barrett To SCOTUS,” by Clemente Lisi at Religion Unplugged.