Justice Ginsburg: Roe v. Wade not 'woman-centered'

[mucifer]

Forty years after the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Roe v. Wade case legalized abortion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the case is not her "ideal picture" for resolving the controversial issue of abortion.

Instead, the landmark decision gave abortion-rights opponents a rallying point that is still used today, Ginsburg — the second female justice ever appointed to the court — told a packed crowd Saturday at the University of Chicago Law School auditorium.

In that case, U.S. Air Force Cpt. Susan Struck became pregnant in 1970 while serving in Vietnam. Ginsburg, who at the time represented Struck as a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said the woman had two choices: leave the military or have a legal abortion on base.

"The idea was: 'Government, stay out of this,' " Ginsburg said. "I wish that would have been the first case. The court would have better understood this is a question of a woman's choice."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-justice-ginsburg-roe-v-wade-not-womancentered-20130511,0,3079568.story

It's an interesting article.

[cali]

1. I think she's flat out wrong.

she makes the case that without Roe, abortion would be more accessible. I don't buy it for a nanosecond.

[mucifer]

2. She is saying they chose the wrong case for women's rights.

[Sekhmets Daughter]

3. That was not her point...

She makes the case that Roe v Wade is about doctors and not the right of a woman to choose... I think she is flat out 100% correct!

Roe v Wade could have overturned the Texas law, and paved the way for more states to legalize abortion. Eventually a case would have been argued that it is a woman's right to choose for herself. Roe V Wade buried the chances of such a case being argued before the court. That is her point. Just look at what has been happening over the past 40 years and particularly over the past decade!

[msanthrope]

6. I think you completely missed her point. She is correct--Roe is doctor, not woman-centered, and the

Air Force case might have been better.

Her arguments in Frontiero were brilliant.

[CTyankee]

4. I get her point but I still think that even with a state by state approach there would have

been a furious backlash at each state level.

The fact is that women were dying of illegal abortions, pre-Roe. Once Roe was decided, women stopped dying from illegal abortions. It was a dramatic decrease. I am glad that those lives were saved.

[X_Digger]

5. If you read the text of Roe, you'll notice she's right.

Roe is more about the privacy of decisions between doctors and patients than it is about abortions specifically.

[Gman]

7. Exactly, Roe was about privacy

And has even been cited in many privacy cases argued before the court.