Ginsburg, Roe and Population Control

Like Ria, I was happy to hear Ruth Bader Ginsburg announce herself a product of affirmative action. In her interview with The New York Times Magazine, Justice Ginsburg says that Columbia University's 1972 decision to offer her tenure as a law professor was motivated by politics. It would be another decade before my alma mater would admit its first female student in the fall of 1983.

But it was Justice Ginsburg's comment on another bullet point on the feminist movement's CV that had me reading, then re-reading and then re-reading again. In 1973, one year after her tenure at Columbia began, the Supreme Court ruled on Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that legalized abortion. And Ginsburg had this to say about her feelings "at the time":

"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."

Whaaa? Having the faintest of inklings that Justice Ginsburg was not advocating the "one child policy," I had to read that entire paragraph at least three times. To be clear, Ginsburg is a supporter of reproductive choice and says in the interview "that the government has no business making that choice for a woman."

But in her answer to a question about Harris v. McRae, the 1980 Supreme Court decision that "forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions," Ginsburg basically admits that she once thought Roe v. Wade would be used as a form of population control. Therefore she was "surprised" by the court's decision, since obviously most women using Medicaid are poor and, well, that's obviously a population "that we don't want to have too many of." And to be fair, Ginsburg concludes her answer by saying "I realized that my perception of (Roe v. Wade) had been altogether wrong."

Still, it was scary to read that sentence. To think that just for one moment abortion, Medicaid, population growth and poor women were being lumped together in one thought. And that all this was coming from a woman who admits affirmative action is necessary and that being a Jewish woman from Brooklyn affects her decision making. Then again, Justice Ginsburg also knows when to admit that she'd been "altogether wrong."