Republican senators have pressed Jackson on pressing legal issues, such as Roe v Wade, the Second Amendment, and expansion of the court’s nine seats, but it was an unusual question from Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) that turned the hearings upside down.
“Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” Blackburn asked the judge Wednesday morning.
“Can I provide a definition? No,” Brown replied.
“You can’t?” the senator pressed.
“Not in this context,” the federal judge, who would be the first black woman seated on the U.S. Supreme Court, replied. “I’m not a biologist.”
Jackson’s dumb-sounding answer instantly spawned finger-pointing accusations among many conservatives, who know the Harvard Law School graduate, and mother of two, isn’t dumb. Rather, critics said the federal judge was outed in that exchange as an adherent of far-left ideology about human sexuality and biology.
In other words, she was exposed as “woke."
If that is the case, in the eyes of her critics that moves Judge Jackson far to the left of feminist views on abortion and women’s rights, which are reflected in the Roe v Wade abortion ruling and in the landmark Title X federal law that was passed to protect biological women from discrimination.
A day before Sen. Blackburn queried the federal judge over human biology, Jackson was grilled by several other GOP senators about her long record of appeasing sex offenders, in particular child pornography peddlers, in her courtroom. In numerous cases, they received prison sentences that were far below the recommendation of federal prosecutors.
“I believe you care for children," Sen. Ted Cruz told Jackson. "But I also see a record of activism and advocacy as it concerns sexual predators that stems back decades. And that is concerning."
The GOP senators said those criminal defendants were among the most evil defendants to appear before her, whose victims had been robbed of their innocence, and yet the judge literally apologized to one convicted felon, an 18-year-old teenager, and to his family.
“Is he the victim here or are the victims the victims?" Sen. Josh Hawley asked.
The man’s porn collection was “not actually as large as it seems,” Judge Jackson explained, and the sexual images he possessed were “peers.”
“Judge, he was 18, these kids are 8,” Hawley pointed out. “I don't see in what sense they're peers.”
Hawley also read from Jackson’s writings in the Harvard Law Review, where she complained about the “climate of hate, fear and revenge” that exists around the issue of releasing convicted sex criminals back into society.
Jackson said her legal paper was examining “the ways in which courts make determinations about the character of the law and all of the consequences that follow from them.”
'If you can't identify what a woman is...'
Back in February, a right-leaning Latino group was warning the public the little-known nominee would be exposed during the Senate hearings.
“Hispanic citizens who are turned off by the Democrats’ turn to the extreme left,” Alfonso Aguilar told Fox News, “will take note that the president has decided to nominate someone who, in her career as an attorney and then as a federal judge, has aggressively worked to promote a woke agenda."
Penny Nance, who leads the right-leaning Concerned Women for America, tells AFN that Jackson could not answer Sen. Blackburn’s question because the judge views the issue as a political one.
“If you can’t identify what a woman is, that there’s differences between the sexes,” Nance says, “then you don’t have the discernment and wisdom to be a Supreme Court justice.”
May Mailman, an attorney at the Independent Women’s Law Center, reminds AFN that Judge Jackson’s confirmation hearing follows closely behind the 2018 nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, who was accused by Democrats of sexually assaulting women as a teenager. Four years ago, she says, Democrats opposed his confirmation with the phrase “Believe All Women" but those same accusers now can’t define what a woman is.
“You don’t have to be a biologist,” says Mailman, herself a Harvard Law graduate, “to define a woman.”
Regarding the controversial abortion issue, Judge Jackson refused to answer Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) when he pressed her for her personal views.
"When does life begin?" Sen. Kennedy asked.
"Senator, I don't know," Jackson replied.
"Ma'am?" the senator pressed.
"I don't know," she repeated.
Pro-life activist Hugh Brown, who leads the American Life League, says the judge's non-answer is a "big red flag" for people to "very clearly understand who she is and what she stands for..."
