Let's all breathe. Why Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wasn't All That Fond of Roe v. Wade
'The late Supreme Court justice believed the landmark ruling was too sweeping and vulnerable to attacks, explains Professor Mary Hartnett, co-author of Justice Ginsburg’s authorized biography.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg wasn’t really fond of Roe v. Wade, the landmark Supreme Court decision that in 1973 established a constitutional right to abortion. She didn’t like how it was structured.
The ruling, she noted in a lecture at New York University in 1992, tried to do too much, too fast — it essentially made every abortion restriction in the country at the time illegal in one fell swoop — leaving it open to fierce attacks.
“Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped,” she said, “may prove unstable.”
It was because of her early criticism of one of the most consequential rulings for American women that some feminist activists were initially suspicious of her when President Bill Clinton nominated her for the Supreme Court in 1993, worried that she wouldn’t protect the decision.
Of course, they eventually realized that Justice Ginsburg’s skepticism of Roe v. Wade wasn’t driven by a disapproval of abortion access at all, but by her wholehearted commitment to it.
The way Justice Ginsburg saw it, Roe v. Wade was focused on the wrong argument — that restricting access to abortion violated a woman’s privacy. What she hoped for instead was a protection of the right to abortion on the basis that restricting it impeded gender equality, said Mary Hartnett, a law professor at Georgetown University who will be a co-writer on the only authorized biography of Justice Ginsburg.
Justice Ginsburg “believed it would have been better to approach it under the equal protection clause” because that would have made Roe v. Wade less vulnerable to attacks in the years after it was decided, Professor Hartnett said. She and her co-author on the biography, Professor Wendy Williams, spent the last 17 years interviewing Justice Ginsburg for the book and, though it initially didn’t have a release date, they are hoping to publish it some time next year, Professor Hartnett said in an interview.
In a way, Justice Ginsburg’s opinion on Roe perfectly encapsulates how she functioned. She was passionate about equality for women, L.G.B.T.Q. people and minority groups, and fiercely devoted to human dignity and respect, Professor Hartnett said. But she was also deeply thoughtful and measured on how to bring those conditions about, and her decisions — shaped by nuanced legal reasoning — sometimes ran counter to what many of her fans might have expected.
“She was very strategic but she was also very client-focused,” Professor Hartnett said. “She cared about people and about the real-life problems that these legal issues created. She did that as an advocate, as a judge and a justice.”'>>>
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/21/us/ruth-bader-ginsburg-roe-v-wade.html
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