Ruth Bader Ginsburg appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 20, 1993 for her confirmation hearing. This is how she introduced herself to the Senate that day:
"I am, as you know from my responses to your questionnaire, a Brooklynite, born and bred — a first-generation American on my father’s side, barely second-generation on my mother’s. Neither of my parents had the means to attend college, but both taught me to love learning, to care about people, and to work hard for whatever I wanted or believed in. Their parents had the foresight to leave the old country, when Jewish ancestry and faith meant exposure to pogroms and denigration of one’s human worth. What has become of me could happen only in America. Like so many others, I owe so much to the entry this Nation afforded to people yearning to breathe free.
I have had the great fortune to share life with a partner truly extraordinary for his generation, a man who believed at age 18 when we met, and who believes today, that a woman’s work, whether at home or on the job, is as important as a man’s. I attended law school in days when women were not wanted by most members of the legal profession. I became a lawyer because Marty and his parents supported that choice unreservedly."
Her untimely death, which she fought so hard to delay, has brought the country again to a crisis of conscience and principle. The forces in this country that want to destroy everything that Justice Ginsburg devoted her life to are on the march to fill the void she leaves with someone that will undo her work. We have to fight with everything we have to deny them that soiled victory.
BONUS: Read Joe Biden's statement on Ginsburg's passing and what comes next here.
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