Justice Ginsburg: Supreme Court Won’t Reverse Roe v. Wade, Unlimited Abortions

National   |   Steven Ertelt   |   Jul 12, 2010   |   9:00AM   |   WASHINGTON, DC

Justice Ginsburg: Supreme Court Won’t Reverse Roe v. Wade, Unlimited Abortions

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 12
, 2010

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — Last week, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she is confident the Supreme Court will never overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that resulted in unlimited abortions in the United States. She said doing so would hurt poor people who supposedly have no other resource during an unplanned pregnancy.

Participating in a discussion during the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado, Ginsburg said the infamous decision that allowed more than 52 million abortions won’t be overturned because women and society has gotten used to it.

"Over a generation of young women have grown up, understanding they can control their own reproductive capacity, and in fact their life’s destiny," Ginsburg said, according to a Politico report. "We will never go back to the way it once was."

"If people realize that, maybe they will have a different attitude," she said of supposed reasons why poor women need abortions.

In an introduction of Ginsburg for the event, pro-abortion former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said Ginsburg is relishing adding a new member of the Supreme Court — pro-abortion activist Elena Kagan, whom President Barack Obama has nominated to replace retiring pro-abortion Justice John Paul Stevens.

O’Connor said Ginsburg is "looking forward to now getting another woman on the court," Politico indicated.

Ginsburg’s comments on abortion and its availability for poor women are not surprising given how she was taken to task last year for her comments about the Roe v. Wade abortion case that appeared racist.

In a July 2009 interview with the New York Times, Ginsburg said she once supported Roe for population control reasons targeting minorities.

Ginsburg first advocated taxpayer funding of abortions and followed it up by saying she backs Roe to eliminate "populations that we don’t want to have too many of."

"Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious," she says.

Reporter Emily Bazelon then asked Ginsburg a question about what she meant and Ginsburg responded that she referred to the 1980 Harris v. McRae ruling upholding the Hyde amendment, which prohibits federal taxpayer funding of abortions, surprised her.

"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," Ginsburg said.

Congressman Trent Franks, an Arizona Republican, told LifeNews.com at the time he found the remarks off-putting.

"Justice Ginsburg’s statement is appalling, but should be unsurprising to those who are familiar with the roots of the pro-abortion movement, largely organized by eugenicists who wanted to limit population growth amongst peoples they considered to be ‘undesirables,’" he said.

Roe is the 1973 Supreme Court decision that, along with Doe v. Bolton, allowed virtually unlimited abortions for any reason throughout pregnancy.

 

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