Pro-Life Advocates Take Justice Ginsburg to Task for Racist Abortion Comments

From http://lifenews.com/nat5215.html

Pro-Life Advocates Take Justice Ginsburg to Task for Racist Abortion Comments

by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
July 14, 2009

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Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Pro-life advocates are taking Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to task for her comments about the Roe v. Wade abortion case that appeared racist. Last week, in an interview with the New York Times, Ginsburg says she once supported Roe for population control reasons targeting minorities.

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

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 asks Ginsburg a question about what she means and Ginsburg responds that 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 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.

He said that more attention needs to be given to the "role racism played in bringing about abortion-on-demand in the United States, as former slave owners and elites turned to eugenics as a means of keeping minorities underfoot."

"Abortion policy is not and has never been neutral. Instead, it targets specific populations, just as Justice Ginsburg surmised," Franks explained.

"A minority woman is five times more likely to abort her child than a white woman, and far more likely to have a government subsidized abortion clinic in her neighborhood. According to abortion providers, a shocking 50 percent of African-American pregnancies end in abortion," he told LifeNews.com.

Barry McLerran, producer of the just-released documentary "Demographic Bomb," which tackles the subject of population control, is also appalled by the remarks.

"Ginsburg is speaking of the poor here. Her thinking reflects the mindset of the liberal elite, which has long felt that getting rid of people is the easiest solution to pressing problems," he told LifeNews.com on Tuesday.

"This raises the ugly specter of the eugenics movement of the early 20th century, which sought to limit the growth of 'undesirable' or the 'unfit,'" McLerran added.

The documentary producer told LifeNews.com that it was no coincidence that the population-control movement had long targeted those in poverty and minorities in America and the populations of developing nations, including African countries.

"It's rare for Planned Parenthood to open abortion clinics in wealthy, white neighborhoods. When was the last time the United Nations Population Division fretted about 'over-population' in Norway or Canada?" he asked.

Related web sites:
The Population Bomb: Demography Is Destiny - http://www.demographicwinter.com