What Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought of Roe v. Wade
By Monica Chen Although the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been held up by the pro-choice movement and feminist organizations as an icon of feminism, widely assumed to support Roe v. Wade, what the movements have been ignoring are Ginsburg’s own words on the decision. Ginsburg had strong criticisms of Roe over the decades, and was consistent in her points of criticism. Ginsburg even called the landmark 1973 decision, which legalized abortions nationwide, a “regime.” Her words are now echoed by Justice Samuel Alito’s recent leaked draft opinion to overturn the decision. The Court had “fashion(ed) a regime blanketing the subject, a set of rules that displaced virtually every state law then in force,” Ginsburg wrote forcefully in 1992 in the wake of Planned Parenthood v. Casey. Ginsburg thought Roe took the debate on abortion out of state legislatures — away from the legislative branch of government — and that’s where that debate had been up to that point and should have stayed. According to Politico, Alito wrote in his majority draft …