Posted on 07/08/2009 6:57:10 PM PDT by pissant
In an astonishing admission, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she was under the impression that legalizing abortion with the 1973 Roe. v. Wade case would eliminate undesirable members of the populace, or as she put it "populations that we don't want to have too many of."
Her remarks, set to be published in the New York Times Magazine this Sunday but viewable online now, came in an in-depth interview with Emily Bazelon titled, "The Place of Women on the Court."
(snip)
Question: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?
Ginsburg: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn't really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
No, she was not opposed to abortion. But the WND article is trying to slant it that she supported (or that the SC did) abortion for the sake of population control. I don't think that's what she's saying.
Ugly people shouldn’t breed...
Did she state she was against Roe or not. If it was a eugenics construct, as she said she beleived, then she must have been against it, right??
Abortion’s the slow way to reduce ‘undesirable’ populations. Didn’t someone in Europe a few decades ago have a faster way, one that affected Bader Ginsberg’s relatives?
She did not state she was against abortion.
She did not state whether she was for or against abortion used as eugenics.
She stated that she did not anticipate that the SC would vote against a law that might have encouraged abortion used as eugenics. (She didn’t say which way she voted on the case about Medicaid paid abortions, only that she was surprised at the votes of the other jurists).
Which is not what the WND article (and most of the posters here) are trying to make this story out to be.
For 7 years, she thought that R. V. W. was a eugenics based decision. Did she or did she not support R. V. W.?
You know, the undersirable group can change depending on political advantage.
Did you read the NYT article?
She said “some people thought” that Medicaid paid abortions might induce eugenic abortions.
I’m not defending her position on abortion. I’m defending a correct reading of what she actually said in this New York Times article. We need to be accurate and precise.
I don’t think the WND article nor many people commenting on it are being accurate and precise. This hurts the pro-life cause.
Can’t you answer a simple question? We ALL know she supported abortion. But she said:
“Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
SO for 7 years, 1973-80, she believed this. Did she or did she not support R.V.W for those 7 years until 1980, when “I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong.”
The answer is yes, she supported the seemingy eugenics based decision.
She later says "some people felt ..." (regarding the Medicaid issue)
Beware and be aware of the passive voice.
She included herself by using WE
ANd how the hell else would her mind be changed in 1980 if she knew all along it wasn’t a eugenics construct. You are grasping at straws.
Ginsburg joined the court 20 years after Roe v. Wade and 13 years after Harris v. McRae.
She obviously supports abortion (but we do not know from this inteview how long she has supported abortion).
She is making commentary on how her assumptions about the societal motivations behind Roe v Wade changed over time (and well before her appointment to the court). She is saying her assumptions were proved wrong by Harris v. McRae. (I think her initial assumptions were correct, but that’s neither here nor there).
She very well could have the same motivations for supporting abortion as those she suspected others of having. But we do not know this to be true from what she said in this interview.
You’re assumimg she supported abortion in 1980, but there is no evidence of that in this interview.
How do you know when she started supporting abortion?
Nowhere does she say “societal motivations”. She does say we though.
The same reason I know Ronald Reagan was a conservative before he came to office. I know her history
know = knew
The ugly truth is. . . .the Left is a mass-murdering cult.
100 million per the Black Book of Communism.
And, it was the NSDAP, national socialist German workers party.
It's got "socialism" and "workers"--
--but Janet Nazitano figures it's abortion opponents who must be sent to the ovens.
Oh, those wacky Leftists!
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