Justice Ginsburg

So Justice Ginsburg is being pilloried for saying this in response to a question about abortion:

" JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] 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."

All the conservoblogs are lit up about this. They are saying that Ginsburg wants to use abortion for eugenics.

But here is the rest of her answer, "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."

In other words, Ginsburg is saying, more or less, that she was skeptical of Roe because she thought some of its backers were pushing for eugenics, but she realized it was a misimpression on her part later when a second court decision barred medicaid funding for abortions.