The religious right and progressives mobilize before a change in the Supreme Court that affects the right to abortion

WASHINGTON DC— The replacement of the late Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg has galvanized the religious right, which cherishes the idea that a Supreme Court with a strong conservative majority can outlaw abortion, but also progressive movements, which seek to safeguard this right to women.

Ginsburg died Friday at the age of 87 from complications of pancreatic cancer.

President Donald Trump will nominate his replacement on Saturday, and he already has a sufficient majority in the Senate to be confirmed before the November 3 presidential and legislative elections.

Ginsburg's death leaves only Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan on the progressive wing of the Supreme Court, compared to five conservatives who will be six if Trump completes the renewal process.

The president has already made it his new electoral slogan: "Fill the vacancy."

Trump has boasted about placing 300 conservative judges in federal courts, allowing him to advance that political agenda.

However, several polls, including from the conservative chain Fox News, and from Marquette University, show that voters would prefer that he not be the one to decide in this case, fearing such a patent ideological imbalance in the court that defines in ultimately key issues of American society.  

"There was already a lot at stake in this election, and I certainly think that now there is a possibility that the Court will turn more to the right, and people understand that this will have an impact for generations," said Jamille Fields Allsbrook, analyst at the Center for American Progress.

"If a sixth conservative judge enters, progressives would lose much of the ground they have conquered for years," said this expert on women's issues.

Conservative Republican Groups Campaign Against President Trump

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This possibility, however, may fuel Trump's re-election campaign among white evangelical voters, who pushed for his victory in 2016 but had suffered a slight drop in support for the president in recent months.

It also excites the religious right, which is mostly Republican and has for decades fought a battle in Congress and state legislatures for more restrictions on abortion rights.

The Christian vote, and in particular that of evangelicals, has been decisive since at least the 1980s, with the emergence of the so-called "moral majority", aligned with nationalism and conservatism.

Now there are groups that consider Trump practically a messiah, although there are also those that prefer his rival, the Democrat Joe Biden, like Christian Democrats of America.

Johnny Ramírez Johnson, anthropologist and professor at the Latino Center of Fuller Theological Seminary, believes that "the jewel of another conservative judge" opposed to abortion and the gay community will surely win over the 20% of Latinos who have bought "the prosperity gospel." of which the president presumes.

But 80% of Latino evangelicals, who have seen the pain of immigration policies up close, as well as white evangelicals who assess Trump's moral character and rely on the teachings of the Bible, “reject hatred and embrace hope, ”he argued.

Protesters protest with speakers and posters in front of Senator Mitch McConnell's house

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Also progressives mobilize

The renewal of the Supreme Court also mobilizes Democrats and like-minded progressive groups.

Biden's campaign launched an initiative dubbed

last week

to add votes among Latino evangelicals and other denominations.  

Cuban-American businessman Felice Gorordo, former adviser to Democratic President Barack Obama, stated that there is a clear contrast between Biden, a Catholic who "lives his faith with actions" and Trump, who with his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has shown "indifference for the lives of others ”.

Gorordo's mother suffered from pancreatic cancer and Biden, who had just lost her son Beau to brain cancer, encouraged her to make a pilgrimage with Pope Francis to Cuba in 2015.

"It was an incredible experience, my mother was reunited with her family after almost half a century," she recalled, "and received the personal blessing of the Pope" two months before she died.

Biden "lives his faith with actions" and helped his mother seek out experimental therapies when chemotherapy and radiation were no longer working, said Gorordo, who attacked Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.