[Congressional Record Volume 166, Number 165 (Wednesday, September 23, 2020)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5806-S5807]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                Remembering Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

  Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, a 5-foot-1-inch giant, Ruth Bader 
Ginsburg changed this Nation--and the potential of my own life--time 
and again, seeing no challenge too big and finding no cause too small 
to fight for. A woman with the softest voice, yet the most powerful 
words one could ever imagine, she made it her life's work to lift up 
the voices of others who all too often had been silenced or ignored.
  With every case she argued, with every ruling she issued, with every 
dissent she penned, Justice Ginsburg helped push our country toward 
that more perfect Union our Founders once

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wrote of in the Constitution she believed in so fiercely.
  Our democracy may have been founded in the 18th century, but it 
wasn't fully built when the ink dried on the Declaration of 
Independence. It was shaped and strengthened, forged and formed, not 
just by those whose faces loom large on Mount Rushmore but by someone 
who was often the smallest, quietest person in nearly every room she 
ever walked into. It is because of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's brilliance and 
resilience that so many of us have the rights we too often take for 
granted, and it is because of her that who I am today is possible.
  Long before she was a Supreme Court Justice, she was a relatively 
unknown law school professor who altered the course of history when she 
argued that the equal protection promised under the 14th Amendment 
didn't just mean equal protection for men. Her legal genius was 
captured in her first landmark victory and reflected in her choice of a 
male plaintiff to demonstrate that discrimination on the basis of sex 
harms every American, male and female alike.
  Suddenly, thanks to this idealistic, young lawyer who spent her own 
law school years having her place questioned because of her sex, it 
became illegal to discriminate against women because they happened to 
be women. That same tenacity, that same trailblazing intellect, that 
same woman also helped pave the way for me to succeed in my career as a 
woman in the military.
  In 1973, she made sure that the equal rights for women she had helped 
to secure extended to the women who were seeking to defend our Nation, 
arguing and winning her first case in front of the Supreme Court--
getting the Justices to rule in an 8-to-1 fashion that the military 
could not give a female servicemember fewer benefits than her male 
counterparts.
  Her life, her position, and her title changed over the next couple of 
decades, as we all well know, but her convictions did not. It was 23 
years after standing in front of the bench of the highest Court in the 
land to argue that our Armed Forces could not discriminate against a 
woman in their ranks that Ruth Bader Ginsburg herself sat on that very 
same bench and issued a ruling that changed everything for countless 
women who dreamed of serving their country in uniform. She struck down 
the State-funded Virginia Military Institute's male-only acceptance 
policy, granting women the ability to learn and train alongside men at 
one of the top military academies in the Nation.
  In a ruling I plan to read out loud to my little girls some nights 
instead of their usual bedtime stories, she wrote of potential female 
VMI students, arguing: ``Generalizations about `the way women are,' 
estimates of what is appropriate for most women, no longer justify 
denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them 
outside the average description.''
  I can't begin to imagine the number of women generals and flag 
officers and servicemembers she paved the way for with those rulings, 
but I do know the story of one, not a flag officer--just me, myself.
  As I was a couple years into the Army when she wrote that decision, 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped make my career in the military possible. She 
helped make my hope of one day serving in a combat role regardless of 
my gender, of one day commanding a unit--despite most of my crew being 
men--achievable. It was because of her that my dreams had the 
opportunity to become a reality.
  You know, yesterday, I told my 5-year-old, Abigail--named for Abigail 
Adams, another feminist--that we were taking a field trip instead of 
our usual homeschooling routine, and I took her and her younger sister, 
Maile, to the steps of the highest Court in the land. I didn't expect 
to get emotional, and I didn't expect to tear up, but with Maile in my 
lap and Abigail by my side, I started to cry. I was crying because it 
was not just my military career Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped to make 
possible but my family too.
  I may never have been able to become a mom if it were not for Justice 
Ginsburg. Without her, without what she did to safeguard healthcare and 
reproductive freedoms, I might never have been able to get pregnant 
through IVF. I might never have been able to have my two little girls; 
never would have been able to watch Abigail place a bouquet of white 
roses on the steps of the Supreme Court if Ruth Bader Ginsburg hadn't 
spent decades in that very same building, defending my rights. She 
changed--no, she gave me the opportunity to achieve my life as it is 
today.
  Her passing isn't just heartbreaking for me and for countless other 
women across this country; it is a loss for our entire Nation. It is a 
loss for justice, a loss for equality.
  While today I will continue to mourn everything we lost when she 
passed last Friday, I promise that tomorrow I am going to roll up my 
sleeves and honor her in the way I believe to be most true to how she 
lived her life--by fighting like hell for what is right and for all of 
our rights.
  My daughters might be too young to remember going to the Supreme 
Court to pay our respects to RBG, but they will know her legacy, and 
already, every day, they are living proof of its power.
  I yield the floor.
  I suggest the absence of a quorum.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
  The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
  Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for 
the quorum call be rescinded.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.