Borgen, RBG and Amy Coney Barrett

We just finished binge-watching 3 seasons, 30 episodes of the Danish television series BORGEN. Borgen, I learned, means “castle” in Danish, and is the common name for the huge castle in which all three branches of the Danish government reside. We spaced out the viewing, one or two episodes most evenings because we didn’t want it to end. It’s more or less the Danish version of THE WEST WING, but with a dynamic and complex female prime minister. Birgitte becomes the Prime Minister unexpectedly, and the series is about her struggle to maintain her principles and push for the changes she believes in while staying in power with all the compromises that entail. She also struggles to maintain her marriage and care for her 2 children while under the spotlight of public life. Although Birgitte makes many missteps, she remains throughout the series a person of values and a politician who is also a human being. If only such a person really existed in our country today.

RBG was such a person. Since I last wrote a blog, she is gone, but her legacy remains, at least momentarily. Many have written eloquently about her, so I’m not going to try. Ruth Bader Ginsburg identified the values she believed in, and she fought for them all of her life, as a lawyer, and then on the Supreme Court. She understood that in order to have equality in society, the rights of women had to be acknowledged and protected by law. She also had a husband and a family and that was no easy task with the work she undertook.

Today, we don’t have RBG, and we don’t have Birgitte. Instead, we have the newest Supreme Court nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. She of blank demeanor, sidestepper of opinions, and mother of 7 children, most of whom were submitted to the grueling hours of their mother’s nomination hearings. Every Republican Senator who addressed Judge Barrett started with a good 5-minute intro praising her qualifications, her motherhood, her willingness to take on public service even if it meant less time with her family, her trailblazing as a conservative woman, and apparently most importantly, as a conservative Catholic. Senator Mike Lee who arrived maskless from Utah after contracting COVID-19 from one of the president’s gatherings, started by comparing notes on which religious group had been more persecuted – the Mormons, or the Catholics. There is no longer any pretense of separation of church and state in government. How do these Senators know she is a good mother? I have no idea. But in the new ultra-conservatism, apparently, women must be able to do it all.

Amy Coney Barrett is not a conservative, she is a reactionary. She is trying to roll us back to the 1950s. To say that she does not come to the Supreme Court with an agenda is madness. Every aspect of her career as a law professor and as a judge does not support this. She is first and foremost a religious activist. Maybe Judge Barrett can do her work on the Supreme Court and will have enough help that her 7 children will be well cared for. But she is not going to fight for the rights and needs of all women, the rights that RBG fought for, and that women of my generation did too. How many marches, how many campaigns, how many protests have many of us attended over the course of our lives to ensure that women could have basic rights? Access to birth control? If the ACA goes down, tens of thousands of women and children will lose their health insurance, and thus their health care, especially as unemployment rises. Unlike most other first world countries, there are no free rides in the USA in terms of health care.

The mothers Amy Coney Barrett will thrust out into the cold cannot do it all. They can’t take care of their children without affordable health care. If they don’t have the protection of equal pay for equal work and access to good-paying jobs, they can’t take care of their children. They may not be able to keep their jobs if they can’t find affordable childcare. They may not have family members who can step in. They are not hiring nannies. If they make a mistake or suffer a sexual assault, yes, they may have to find the sleazy doctor in the back alley to fix their problem, since if Judge Barrett and the other male conservatives on the Court have their way that will be the only option.

I’m glad your kids are OK, Amy. But the women of this country are not OK with this agenda. It may take years to get this country back to some semblance of sanity, justice, and human decency, but we have to start now.  Vote for Joe Biden – even if you don’t love everything about him. Vote for any Democratic Senator or Congressperson in your district. Without the Senate and the House, Joe Biden and his team will be hamstrung again. Don’t let RBG’s legacy go.