Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Abortion Real Talk: ‘Poor Women Don’t Have Choice’
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spent Wednesday night at Duke University Law School, reflecting on the term that just ended and other major decisions during her tenure.
As the New York Times reported, she talked about what she viewed as the “most disappointing” of the bunch: Citizens United. Ginsburg, who dissented in the decision, said she was troubled by “what has happened to elections in the United States and the huge amount of money it takes to run for office.”
She also offered a bleak assessment of the current landscape for reproductive rights: “Reproductive freedom is in a sorry situation in the United States,” she said. “Poor women don’t have choice.”
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As I’ve written before, this is exactly what the Hyde Amendment was designed to do. “I certainly would like to prevent, if I could legally, anybody having an abortion, a rich woman, a middle-class woman, or a poor woman,” former Illinois Rep. Henry Hyde, the bill’s sponsor and namesake, said in 1973. “Unfortunately, the only vehicle available is the… Medicaid bill.”
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