In a recent interview with the New York Times, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg responded to a question about poor women's access to abortion and the Supreme Court's 1980 decision upholding a legislative ban on federal funding for abortion.
Following is an excerpt from her answer:
"… 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 (the Medicaid funding case), the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong."
Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst for Focus on the Family Action, said Ginsburg's response virtually links Roe to the subject of population control.
"It sounds, at minimum, like she's acknowledging what the abortion lobby has swept under the rug for decades – that the leader of the modern-day abortion movement, Margaret Sanger, was a eugenicist, and that the organization she founded, Planned Parenthood, was set up to help eliminate some of those 'populations that we don't want to have too many of,'" Hausknecht said.
— Devon Williams
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