Supreme Court Justice Ginsberg: I Thought Roe Would Help Eradicate Unwanted Populations

WASHINGTON, D.C., July 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg seems to have made a stunning admission in favor of cleansing America of unwanted populations by aborting them. In an interview with the New York Times, the judge said that Medicaid should cover abortions, and that she had originally expected that Roe v. Wade would facilitate such coverage in order to control the population of groups "that we don't want to have too many of."

The statement was made in the context of a discussion about the fact that abortions are not covered by Medicaid, and therefore are less available to poor women. "Reproductive choice has to be straightened out," said Ginsburg, lamenting the fact that only women "of means" can easily access abortion.

"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," Ginsburg told Emily Bazelon of the New York Times.

No, post 54 and you miss the point.

First of all, it’s certainly true that leftists do not carefully consider what we say or try to put a generous construction on what we say.

But if that’s your defense, then you have simply sunk to their level. If you want to do that, be my guest. I think that simple truth and decency requires that we be fair to others, even to those we vehemently disagree with.

More specifically, this is an interview. I have been interviewed. The customs of journalism permit interviewers to put “ “ around words as long as they reasonably reflect what the interviewee said.

Above all, interviewers routinely take a paragraph or two spoken by the interviewee (we often ramble when we speak) and condenses it, massages it a bit in order to make it suitable for print. The interviewer, of course, believes that she has not done violence to the meaning of the interviewer even as she has significantly revised the actual wording.

You cannot simply assume that the interview gives word for word what Ginsburg said. The sentences at issue here in the interview are, on their face, ambiguous. They are prima facie ambiguous because there is a shift from a reference to the past with past tense passive verb (meaning an unclear subject to the verb) to a present tense with a clear first person plural. Normally the present tense first person plural would mean that that verb includes the speaker. But since in the same breath (in the printed interview, not necessarily in the conversation) Ginsburg also used passive past tense, there’s no way to be sure she wasn’t using “we” in historical present tense. If she had used indirect discourse markers she could have been clear, but we don’t always do that when speaking—we depend on body language and inflection to help the listener know the difference. Thus it’s even possible that the printed words are close to Ginsburg’s spoken words but that the interviewer failed to add clarification that was unnecessary when spoken but necessary in print.

But either way,whether one interprets the “we” as in Ginsburg’s voice or not, one has to interpret. Those who say Ginsberg speaks as a eugenicist here are intepreting because the words and time references by themselves are unclear.

In the actual interview, Ginsburg may well have distinguished between the “we” of the black leaders concerned about abortion-genocide back before Roe v. Wade and any “we” today that would include her but the interviewer obscured that when she wrote up the interview. If that’s what happened, it’s malfeasant on the part of the interviewer

Now, I offered a law review article quotation that we know for sure is in Ginsburg’s own voice. It suggests a different interpretation. It doesn’t prove a different interpretation. I don’t claim to know whether she is or is not a eugenicist. I just claimed that one cannot know based on this printed interview.

Anyone who claims to know on the basis of this printed interview has interpreted, parsed the text differently.

Everyone is parsing here. So stop it already with the onesided accusation of parsing. You are as big a parser as I am.

Of course Ginsburg believed abortion was for population control!

Here is an excerpt from Henry Kissiger’s declassified National Security Study Memorandum
http://www.population-security.org/28-APP2.html

Excerpts
Section 114, A.I.D. has determined that foreign assistance funds will not be used to:

(i) procure or distribute equipment provided for the purpose of inducing abortions as a method of family planning.

(ii) directly support abortion activities in LDCs. However, A.I.D. may provide population program support to LDCs and institutions as long as A.I.D. funds are wholly attributable to the permissible aspects of such programs.

(iii) information, education, training, or communication programs that promote abortion as a method of family planning. However, A.I.D. will continue to finance training of LDC doctors in the latest techniques used in obstetrics-gynecology practice, and will not disqualify such training programs if they include pregnancy termination within the overall curriculum. Such training is provided only at the election of the participants.

(iiii) pay women in the LDCs to have abortions as a method of family planning or to pay persons to perform abortions or to solicit persons to undergo abortions.

Utilization of Mass Media for Dissemination of Family Planning Services and Information

Yet A.I.D.’s work suggests that radio, posters, printed material, and various types of personal contacts by health/family planning workers tend to be more cost-effective than television except in those areas (generally urban) where a TV system is already in place which reaches more than just the middle and upper classes. There is great scope for use of mass media, particularly in the initial stages of making people aware of the benefits of family planning and of services available; in this way mass media can effectively complement necessary interpersonal communications.

In almost every country of the world there are channels of communication (media) available, such, as print media, radio, posters, and personal contacts, which already reach the vast majority of the population. For example, studies in India - with only 30% literacy, show that most of the population is aware of the government’s family planning program. If response is low it is not because of lack of media to transmit information.

A.I.D. believes that the best bet in media strategy is to encourage intensive use of media already available, or available at relatively low cost. For example, radio is a medium which in some countries already reaches a sizeable percentage of the rural population; a recent A.I.D. financed study by Stanford indicates that radio is as effective as television, costs one-fifth as much, and offers more opportunities for programming for local needs and for local feedback.

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