Justice Ginsburg: Pro-life laws are a ‘crying shame’: make it harder for poor women to get abortions

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 18, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has called state laws protecting the unborn in the U.S. a “crying shame.”

Ginsburg argued in an MSNBC interview Monday that abortion helps women, specifically poor women, and said that the prospect of overturning Roe v. Wade is “the worst case” scenario.

Granting her status as “a champion of reproductive freedom,” the NBC network asked Ginsburg how “it feels” for her to look across the country, seeing “states passing restrictions that make it inaccessible if not technically illegal.”

“Inaccessible to poor women,” Ginsburg responded with a clarification. “It’s not true that it’s inaccessible to women of means. And that’s the crying shame.”

Ginsburg insisted that the country would not go back to the “old ways” of prohibiting abortion, but still decried the disparity in access to abortion between “women of means” and the poor.

“We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country,” she continued. “There are states – take the worst case. Suppose Roe v. Wade is overruled. There will still be a number of states that will not go back to old ways.”

MSNBC questioned Ginsburg about legislative action closing abortion mills “creating barriers in front of women,” to which she persisted in the theme that inability to access abortion harms poor women.

“Yes, but who does that - who does that hurt? It hurts women who lack the means to go someplace else,” Ginsburg replied, continuing later, “But the situation with abortion right now, by all the restrictions, they operate against the woman who doesn’t have freedom to move, to go where she is able to get safely what she wants.”

Ginsburg said that overturning of Roe v. Wade could happen, but that it is unlikely.

The Supreme Court had the opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade in the past, said Ginsburg, but the justices ruled in the 1992 Casey decision that they would not deviate from the previous precedent.

“They did more than that. They gave a reason, a rationale that was absent in Roe v. Wade itself,” she said.

Ginsburg went on to say that Roe v. Wade was as much about a doctor’s right to practice his profession as he sees fit, and that this mistakenly put that on the par with women’s “reproductive rights.”

“The Casey decision recognized that this is not as much about a doctor’s right to practice his profession,” she said. “But about a woman’s right to control her life destiny.”

Ginsburg’s statements echo remarks she made February 4 to a crowd of Georgetown law students, where she said they might have to fight to maintain legalized abortion for the poor given the new state laws regulating abortion.

"It will depend on women of your age if you care about this," Ginsburg said, according to National Law Journal. "There will never be a time when women of means won't have a choice," said Ginsburg, before again expounding on "the worst case scenario" of Roe v. Wade being overturned, saying that some states will still allow abortion, asserting again this will hurt poor women.

"A woman who can afford a plane ticket or a bus ticket will have a choice,” Ginsburg told the students. “Women who won't have that choice are poor women."

The “we will never go back” on abortion idea has been a recurring theme for Ginsburg, who has established a decidedly liberal track record in her two decades-plus on the high court.

In 2004, 13 Republican members of Congress wrote urging her to withdraw from rulings involving abortion, saying her involvement with the pro-abortion National Organization of Women Legal Defense and Education Fund disqualified her as an impartial arbiter in these cases.

Ginsburg has also said she won’t attend the annual Catholic Red Mass for lawmakers because she was once offended at a Red Mass by the pro-life homily.

Ginsburg faced some backlash in 2009 for statements echoing the eugenics component of the abortion movement.

In America, all our constitutional protections rest on the Founders’ premise that all human beings are “endowed by their Creator” with both life and the liberty to “pursue happiness.” That is the sole reason they are deemed unalienable, because they are derived, not from another human being, not from a government, but from God.

“The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” - Thomas Jefferson

That understanding underlies every other consideration embodied in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution. It is the very basis of our rights to life, liberty, and laws to protect them.

Since the 1970’s, technological advances have enabled us to observe God’s tiniest creations in the womb. We no longer have an excuse for imagining that these are blobs of tissue labeled “fetuses.” They are living babies who will have life and liberty if we do not “destroy” them.

At the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington DC on February 3, 1994, Mother Teresa stated: “And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?”

Indeed, if we cannot protect the life and liberty of these smallest versions of ourselves, then Mother Teresa’s words take on significant meaning.

How shameful that a Supreme Court Justice does not make that connection between Creator-endowed rights and the duty to protect them acknowledged by the Framers of America’s Constitution!

James Madison, called the “father” of that Constitution, thought otherwise, as did his fellow Framers:

“The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable; because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds, cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also; because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage, and such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, who enters into any subordinate Association, must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the general authority; much more must every man who becomes a member of any particular Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign. We maintain therefore that in matters of Religion, no man’s right is abridged by the institution of Civil Society, and that Religion is wholly exempt from its cognizance.” - James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance

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