Ginsburg: Roe Abortion Ruling Made for Easy Pro-Life Target

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   May 13, 2013   |   12:52PM   |   Washington, DC

Over the weekend, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg complained that the decision in the Roe v Wade case that allowed virtually unlimited abortions was too overreaching.

She grumbled that it was decided in such a way that it made for an easy target for pro-life advocates complaining about its extremity.

From a report on her talk:

“That was my concern, that the court had given opponents of access to abortion a target to aim at relentlessly,” she told a crowd of students. “… My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum that was on the side of change.”

The ruling is also a disappointment to a degree, Ginsburg said, because it was not argued in weighty terms of advancing women’s rights. Rather, the Roe opinion, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, centered on the right to privacy and asserted that it extended to a woman’s decision on whether to end a pregnancy.

A more restrained judgment would have sent a message while allowing momentum to build at a time when a number of states were expanding abortion rights, she said. She added that it might also have denied opponents the argument that abortion rights resulted from an undemocratic process in the decision by “unelected old men.”

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Ginsburg told the students she prefers what she termed “judicial restraint” and argued that such an approach can be more effective than expansive, aggressive decisions.

“The court can put its stamp of approval on the side of change and let that change develop in the political process,” she said.

Ginsburg told students at Harvard earlier this year that Roe should have been argued incrementally.