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Since the allegations against Brett Kavanaugh broke, Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) has been constantly approached by women with "tears in the their eyes."

Her advice: "Yes, cry—but don't give up the fight."

And there's a good reason.

While today, Sen. Patty Murray is the third-highest ranking member of Senate Democratic leadership, in 1991, she was relatively new to serving in her state's legislature. It was then that she remembers watching Anita Hill testify during Justice Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearings for his appointment to the Supreme Court.



When you look at the Judiciary Committee now, there are smart strong women there and they are asking the right questions.

“When I watched the Anita Hill hearing, not one woman was on the Senate Judiciary Committee—that’s what motivated me to run for the United States Senate,” Murray says. “I remember watching and thinking that there was no one there to say what I would say and to ask what I would ask. I thought, I need to be there."



Two years later, Murray was being sworn in to the United States Senate.

And decades later, she continues to see progress. “When you look at the Judiciary Committee now, there are smart strong women there and they are asking the right questions," she says. “It makes me feel better that I am here and I can go on the Senate floor and I can share stories of survivors."



Still, she knows that women are worried. "If the result is that Kavanaugh gets jammed onto the court anyway, it will feel like women speaking out didn't count," Murray says. "And that's the wrong message to be sent."



But we're not there yet.

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Today, after Senate Republicans asked for an investigation, President Trump ordered a supplemental FBI investigation into the allegations against Kavanaugh.

"I think women need to do what they are doing right now—speaking up and being strong and telling the Senate that they are holding them in judgment, that they can handle this correct, that they can find the facts, that they can allow women to be respected in this process and have their stories believed—and now we are all waiting to see what those men in the Senate will do in response."

Jennifer Gerson Jennifer Gerson is a Maggie Award-winning journalist whose reporting on reproductive rights, women's health, and sexual violence regularly appears in Cosmopolitan, as well as The Guardian, Yahoo, Allure, Teen Vogue, Mic and other national publications.

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