"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."
by:
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
(1933- ) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
Source:
July 7, 2009 interview, New York Times
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Wow, I had not seen nor heard this before. Wouldn't we all have enjoyed the follow up question as to which populations she meant?
 -- J. Allen, Arlington, Va     
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    I believe this to be true. Indigent children cost the federal government lots of money. Cheaper to abort them.
     -- cal, Lewisville, tx     
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    sounds like she would have probably supported Margaret Sangers' "Negro Project".
     -- Al, DC     
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    Upon first reading Ginsburg's words my reaction was much the same as Arlington, Va's appear: incredulity -- though the shock was accompanied by substantial curiosity about the context in which they were spoken. Investigating that context was fruitful.

    Reproducing the seemingly offensive portion of the interview, Media Matters informs that "conservative media," identifying the usual TV blowhards, distorted her intended meaning. They write: "In fact, in the interview, Ginsburg was attributing that sentiment to others."

    The extended quotation provides for a decent Media Matters case, though not a completely compelling one. Call it 'reasonable doubt.'

    In filling out her line of thinking, there's a certain ease about the way her words flow, lending, perhaps, a revealing glimpse into her heart. It's certain she's given the topic great thought - though the odor of elitism remains present.

    Zero stars to the lib-tree for using this quote. Like the bloviators, their apparent intention is fanning conflict, not civilized discourse.
     -- Mann, Kalamazoo     
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    I'm kinda with Kalmazoo on this one. Shock on first glance but then immediatly figured she was refereing to what she felt the justices of the time were thinking. Seemed kinda obvious when you thought about it, which I guess is what lib-tree is trying to get us to do.
     -- Tom, Wichita     
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    Bad sentence structure.
     -- jim k, austin tx     
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    In Roe v. Wade I did agree with the family's right to privacy while such, has absolutely nothing to do with conversations of societal genocide or the wholesale murder of the unborn.
     -- Mike, Norwalk     
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    Please tell all of us dear old Ruth Bader Ginsberg ... what this egregious thought process on 'population growth" has to do in any way, shape or form on whether or not Roe vs Wade adhered completely with the U.S. Constitution?
     -- Mary - MI     
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    It wasn't difficult to find the NYT interview here:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/magazine/12ginsburg-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

    Seems to me that Justice Ginsburg wasn't being taken out of context at all. Specifically, the poor dependent upon federal government 'assistance' like Medicaid is certainly included in the people "that we don’t want to have too many of."

    Hey, you population-controllers, whining there are too many people, unless you are volunteering yourselves, then you are advocating 'ethnic cleansing' which is a euphemism for culling the herd of undesirables. Does anyone else see the connection between socialism (progressive liberalism) and eugenics? Social engineering aims ever towards this tendency.
     -- E Archer, NYC     
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    @Mann, David Brock's Media Matters is hardly objective of Ginsburg's comment, they are essentially a Democrat political front group.
     -- E Archer, NYC     
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    Globally, over 55 million babies are aborted each year. India and China in particular have been using technology to identify the sex of the child and then abort the females. Where's the outrage from women's rights groups?

    We are changing the face of nature which, left to produce without aborting, produces 103 females for every 100 males. Ronald Reagan's chief intelligence advisor, Herbert Meyer, has stated that within a generation China will have 75 million young men, for whom there are no women in China, sitting across the Urals from Russia. And Russia, with the world's largest land mass, has a shrinking population of only 134 million. Russia must reconstitute some form of the Soviet Union just to get the human resources necessary to hold on to their territory and their oil reserves.

    The Muslim populations around the world are not aborting, they're producing and out-birthing the rest of the us by a wide margin. Their rate of growth is such that they will become the dominant populations in European and western countries within a few generations.

    A solid case can be made that abortion will is changing the nature of the earth's population . . . and all for the worse.
     -- Bob M., NH     
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    And this nut case is on the supreme court.
     -- Jim k, Austin     
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    Where, in an ideologue, does objectivity reside?

    Mrs. Ginsburg, unreconstructed, retrograde, "progressive" ideologue whom she is, wants, necessarily, for objectivity, and an even remotely rightly developed judicial temperament, accordingly.

    By any measure, she is unqualified to serve on the Supreme Court.
     -- Patrick Henry, Red Hill     
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    So, the Constitutionality of an issue takes a back seat to her perception of population limits? She was not on that court back then, but it says a lot about her thought process.
     -- SCSURFR, La Mirada     
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