Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell boasted at a prominent anti-abortion gala that he had helped confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh despite Democratic and outside opposition, a move he viewed as one of many victories he secured for advocates who had gathered.
“We were voting more than one man’s career,” McConnell, R-Ky., said Monday evening. “We were voting on basic American principles of fairness and justice. Does the presumption of innocence still apply in America? Yes.”
McConnell was speaking at the 12th annual Campaign for Life gala at the Andrew Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C. The fundraiser is held by Susan B. Anthony List, an organization that advocates for anti-abortion legislation and helps to elect politicians that support their causes.
McConnell received the organization’s 2019 Distinguished Leader Award, which last year went to White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.
The Senate confirmed Kavanaugh in October after he faced a bruising confirmation battle when Christine Blasey Ford testified that he had sexually assaulted her when he was drunk and they were both in high school. Until Ford came forward, much of the backlash from outside groups had been centered around whether Kavanaugh would be the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide.
McConnell received accolades at the event not only for helping to confirm Kavanaugh but also for refusing to hold a vote on Merrick Garland. Former President Barack Obama nominated Garland in 2016 to fill the slot vacated by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, but McConnell declined to hold a vote on the nomination until after the 2016 election. President Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch to the slot, and he was confirmed in 2017.
“I took a lot of heat for it and it paid off,” McConnell said.
McConnell also changed the Senate rules to help more quickly confirm federal court judges. More than 110 of Trump’s appointments have been confirmed. At the gala, McConnell pledged that he would leave no vacancies open.
In his remarks before the crowd, McConnell celebrated two bills he brought to the floor, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which would have permanently banned federal funding for most abortions, and the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, a bill that would have clarified that infants born alive after a botched abortion are to receive the same medical care as a premature baby.
Neither bill passed the Senate, but McConnell said holding the vote helped to show that Democrats would “own their extremism out in the light of day.”
Former Rep. Diane Black gave the award to McConnell and praised his record on having judges confirmed, calling it a “conservative transformation in our nation’s judiciary.”
