Last week I did a great piece if I say so myself, tipped off by my friend Mark, about Ruth Bader Ginsburg's bizarre comment about abortion as a means of eugenics, limiting "populations we don't want too many of." Well today Jonah Goldberg, with whom I probably disagree on 90 percent of all issues, joins me by devoting a column to the ugly statement and wonders as I do, why journalist Emily Bazelon didn't follow up on it. (I say it's because of Bazelon's identification with Ginsburg as a Jewish lawyer, feminist, elitist; so there's no cultural detachment). Hope Goldberg can get the jungle drums in the blogosphere beating out their mad tattoo on this one:
Left unclear is whether Ginsburg endorses the eugenic motivation she ascribed to the passage of RoeWade or whether she was merely objectively describing it. One senses that if Antonin Scalia had offered such a comment, a Times interviewer would have sought more clarity, particularly on the racial characteristics of these supposedly unwanted populations.
Related posts:
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg makes weird statement suggesting abortion serves eugenic goals
- ‘Washington Post’ assails Justice Ginsburg for saying abortion reduces problem ‘populations’
- ‘I have family that lives in Israel’– Stand up if this statement is true
- Marty Peretz makes anti-Arab statement with a racist tinge
- ‘Deep Down Obama Gets It’–Says Woman Who Elicited Candidate’s Statement that ‘Palestinians Suffer the Most’
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Here we go again it's the "good" anti-Israel Jews against the "Bad Jews"
Here we go again, just another example that the MSM never assumes a statement is racist unless it comes from the mouth of a white goy. Ginsburg, Obama, Sotomayor.
Hey, I never called that assistant attorney "boy" and I never called the NAACP "un-American." And witnesses testified so, but I never got to be a federal judge, let alone a member of SCOTUS.
If you think Ginsburg's comment (which I thought was obviously a sarcastic reference to how some people saw abortion at the time of Roe v. Wade) was outrageous, you should research the background of Planned Parenthood, and in particular Margaret Sanger, who founded the organization that eventually became Planned Parenthood. The idea of encouraging abortion and voluntary sterilization among certain "undesirable" segments of the population goes back a long way, and Justice Ginsburg is probably quite aware of that fact. I don't see any reason to think that her comment indicates that she supports that sort of "negative eugenics" herself. If Bazelon didn't dig deeper into the question, it's probably just because she understood what Ginsburg was saying as she intended it. Jonah Goldberg, as a neocon propagandist, simply wants to stir up controversy in connection with someone who, as a liberal jurist, he considers his enemy.
Well, the founder of Planned Parenthood did see abortion as a useful part of a eugenic policy. Perhaps Ginsberg was simply making a reference to the historic appeal of unrestricted abortion to eugenic social planners.
Like David F I too thought Ginsberg's comment was making a reference to the eugenicists' historic enthusiasm for abortion. (And unlike Craig11 didn't think it was a sarcastic reference to "how some people saw abortion at the time of Roe v Wade" for the simple reason that at the time of Roe v. Wade I don't think there were any significant number of people making such favorable racist/extremist statements, with the Right of course just massively and unanimously being against Roe.) On the other hand what is a little funny is that if Ginsburg's comments were in fact merely reflecting on history and the old eugenicist movement how come you never really see a molecule of concern from heavy-duty pro-abortion partisans—like her—about the kind of evil uses abortion can be put? How come, for instance, they never grant that those who are opposed to abortion might indeed be motivated by a fear of those evil uses, and instead always simply choose to attack them as being anti-woman instead? Or how come, for instance, there's never any fear expressed that by making abortion almost absolutely free you are also essentially just making it easier for future racist/extremist governments or organizations or people to start *encouraging* abortions in this way or that for ugly purposes? If, after all, abortion essentially becomes an absolute on-demand right, at any time, why *can't* government pay people to have them for instance? Or reward them with tax breaks? Or have private organizations start paying for the ones they like? At that point it's no different a choice on the part of the mother than deciding what kind of car to buy, right? In so many other areas of the law the Left/liberals have insisted on always looking to the motives behind proposed or established law, with those on the Supreme Court like Ginsburg having no trouble looking at this or that law to see if it had an evil intent. (Such as being racially discriminatory, or homophobic or etc.) Suddenly, however, when considering making law that makes abortions legal, the assumption simply is that of course the only possible motives behind it are and forever will be good, and the only possible objections to it are and forever will be evil. Again this isn't to say that Ginsburg has any eugenicist motives; in fact I admire her and I'd bet my house she doesn't. Nor even is this to be pro or anti-abortion since there are any number of moderate positions that defy such labels. Just noting that it's an odd little blind spot with some very pro-abortion partisans like Ginsburg that they never seem to take into consideration abortion's troublesome history when being so very pro-abortion. A little lesson in humility I guess; even the smartest amongst us like Ginsburg have their blind spots.
Paying women for abortions will never work: they tried something similar in India: they paid men to have vasectomies: Significant proportion of men kept presenting themselves for the repeat procedure. What might work is paying women for not falling pregnant. However, research indicates that the flat payment looses its appeal very quickly and becomes viewed as entitlement. The gradually increasing payment on the other hand is considered workable (works with insurance and addictions!).
RE: " Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was 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 and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of." – Ginsburg MY COMMENT: To be fair, she does not really say that SHE shared the concern about population growth. You can read her comment narrowly as saying she had thought that "concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we [as a people, but not necessarily her individually] don’t want to have too many of " was an unspoken part of the rationale for the Supreme Court's decision. In other words, there might have been "impure" motives on the part of one or more of the justices supporting the decision in Roe vs Wade.
The context of the statement was that Ginsberg was surprised that a Supreme Court ruling came down forbidding the use of Medicaid for abortions. Ginsberg then says: “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.” — Ginsberg’s statement makes clear that she is another in a long line of left-wing Diaspora Jewish misanthropes who were all thinking the same thing about Roe v. Wade: it was a means for eugenics and social engineering useful for eliminating undesirables. As a staunch supporter of Roe v. Wade, clearly she approved, and was surprised that the S.C. wasn’t as heartless as she assumed and as she herself was.
Ed wrote: "Ginsberg’s statement makes clear that she is another in a long line of left-wing Diaspora Jewish misanthropes who were all thinking the same thing about Roe v. Wade: it was a means for eugenics and social engineering…." I don't think that's clear at all Ed, although you are to be thanked for very clearly setting up the context and isolating out her exact comment again. Seems to me at worst she was ascribing a eugenicist mindset to at least some who supported Roe, and the belief that they would then of course want to fund same for Medicaid. I.e., just as Dickerson (a lawyer I think) seems to believe. Ginsburg is as progressive as can be imagined, and as sophisticated a progressive as can be imagined too. Just precisely the kind who today regard eugenics (and indeed damn near anything to do with genes/nature, such as IQ's, as opposed to "nurture/society") with absolute horror. And damn near every lawyer and certainly every Supreme Court judge knows of the ugly history of eugenics on the Court, with Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous ugly statement in the beyond ugly forced sterilization/Carrie Buck case about "three generations of imbeciles [being] enough." No judge today would want to come within a million miles of seeming to endorse anything that could even remotely be said to smell like that. I'm not saying your reading of Ginsburg's statement is dumb or anything; the phrasing is for sure ambiguous. But the background to it makes it not at all so in terms of Ginsburg at least not endorsing eugenics. Just not possible. What surprises me a bit however is the ugliness of her implication that others had eugenic motives, which is kind of doubly odd in fact. Odd in the first instance because she doesn't seem to have an ugly, agressive character and in fact is kind of renown for her equable and friendly if not sweet nature. (Huge social friends with Scalia for instance I've heard.) And odd in the second instance because of course by imputing eugenicist motives she was doing that precisely to other liberals/Lefties/progressives who were the ones chomping at the bit for Roe and for extending Medicaid to pay for same.
It's no secret that I suspect a lot of left-wing Jews who say all the right “progressive” things of harboring deep-seated sub-conscious hostilities towards non-Jews, and occasionally letting the mask slip. That was probably the case here with Ginsberg, who is usually guarded enough to couch her destructive Leftists ideas and attitudes in self-righteous liberal-ese. I don’t think I am irrational to be suspicious of certain Left-Statist Jews who profess to be operating our of the purest of “social justice” motives. After all, the Jewish Bolsheviks professed same, and murdered millions nontheless.
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