New York City, N.Y., Jul 11, 2009 / 05:32 am
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has revealed in an interview that she was surprised at a 1980 court ruling that prevented the restoration of Medicaid funding for abortions, because, in her opinion, when Roe was decided “there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
In the interview, which will run in the Sunday edition of the New York Times Magazine, Justice Ginsburg was first asked: “If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist agenda?”
She responded that “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. The states that changed their abortion laws before Roe are not going to change back. So we have a policy that only affects poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.”
Asking her to clarify, the interviewer said: “Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?”