Roe V Wade Direct Quotes

The blame for the overturning of Roe v Wade does not fall upon the overzealous, vindictive evangelical—either in a pew or judge’s robe—anymore than it does the bruised-knee legislator and his Plus-1, the campaign-financing lobbyist: All are boorish cultural phenomena, buoyed by society’s currents, political inertia determining their every direction. Instead, history will shake its head in disappointment at those who stood idly by and did nothing.

In later unenumerated rights cases the Supreme Court has, for whatever reason, shied away from Justice Goldberg’s suggestion. That has not prevented it from using tests looking to “traditions” and the like for “fundamental rights” worthy of its protection, such as in famous unenumerated rights cases like Roe v. Wade (abortion), Troxel v. Granville (parents’ right to direct the upbringing of their children), or Lawrence v. Texas (right of same-sex intimate sexual conduct).59 But in none of those or related cases has it invoked the Ninth Amendment beyond, at best, a passing reference. Thus, Justice Goldberg’s undeveloped but interesting thoughts on the matter are the only more than transitory statements on the Ninth Amendment from the nation’s highest court.

forced upon others who do not believe it, or when they believe that nonbelievers should be prevented from the robust or humorous expression of their nonbelief, then there’s a problem. The weaponizing of Christianity in the United States has resulted in the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the ongoing battle over abortion, and women’s right to choose. As I say above, the weaponizing of a kind of radical Hinduism by the current Indian leadership has led to much sectarian trouble, and even violence. And the weaponizing of Islam around the world has led directly to the terror reigns of the Taliban and the ayatollahs, to the stifling society of Saudi Arabia, to the knife attack against Naguib Mahfouz, to the assaults on free thought and the oppression of women in many Islamic states, and, to be personal, to the attack against me.

If you’re a pregnant woman living in a malaria-prone country, you have a very different relationship to risk. Pregnant women with malaria are three to four times more likely to suffer from the most severe forms of the disease, and of those who do, 50 percent will die. Ever wonder why the Centers for Disease Control is located in Atlanta? Malaria. The entire reason the United States built the CDC is that malaria was rampant throughout the American South. Malaria was finally eradicated in the United States in 1951. That wasn’t very long ago. Some argue that getting rid of malaria did more good for American women than universal suffrage. Some say it had a bigger effect than Roe v. Wade. Nowadays, in the United States, only 0.65 out of every 100,000 legal abortions will result in the woman’s death, while 26.4 American women still die for every 100,000 live births. Before Roe v. Wade, 17–18 percent of all maternal deaths in the United States were due to illegal abortions—that stat was as true in 1930 as it was in 1967. Meanwhile, as many as one in four maternal deaths in today’s malarial countries are directly tied to the disease. During our worst outbreaks, the same was true in the United States.

RBG’s image as a moderate was clinched in March 1993, in a speech she gave at New York University known as the Madison Lecture. Sweeping judicial opinions, she told the audience, packed with many of her old New York friends, were counterproductive. Popular movements and legislatures had to first spur social change, or else there would be a backlash to the courts stepping in. As case in point, RBG chose an opinion that was very personal to plenty of people listening: Roe v. Wade. The right had been aiming to overturn Roe for decades, and they’d gotten very close only months before the speech with Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Justices Anthony Kennedy, David Souter, and Sandra Day O’Connor had instead brokered a compromise, allowing states to put restrictions on abortion as long as they didn’t pose an “undue burden” on women—or ban it before viability. Neither side was thrilled, but Roe was safe, at least for the moment. Just as feminists had caught their breath, RBG declared that Roe itself was the problem. If only the court had acted more slowly, RBG said, and cut down one state law at a time the way she had gotten them to do with the jury and benefit cases. The justices could have been persuaded to build an architecture of women’s equality that could house reproductive freedom. She said the very boldness of Roe, striking down all abortion bans until viability, had “halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue.” This analysis remains controversial among historians, who say the political process of abortion access had stalled before Roe. Meanwhile, the record shows that there was no overnight eruption after Roe. In 1975, two years after the decision, no senator asked Supreme Court nominee John Paul Stevens about abortion. But Republicans, some of whom had been pro-choice, soon learned that being the anti-abortion party promised gains. And even if the court had taken another path, women’s sexual liberation and autonomy might have still been profoundly unsettling. Still, RBG stuck to her guns, in the firm belief that lasting change is incremental. For the feminists and lawyers listening to her Madison Lecture, RBG’s argument felt like a betrayal. At dinner after the lecture, Burt Neuborne remembers, other feminists tore into their old friend. “They felt that Roe was so precarious, they were worried such an expression from Ruth would lead to it being overturned,” he recalls. Not long afterward, when New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan suggested to Clinton that RBG be elevated to the Supreme Court, the president responded, “The women are against her.” Ultimately, Erwin Griswold’s speech, with its comparison to Thurgood Marshall, helped convince Clinton otherwise. It was almost enough for RBG to forgive Griswold for everything else.