Former Justice Ginsburg was Critical of Roe v. Wade

In 2015, former Justice Ginsburg was speaking at the University of Chicago Law School when it was made clear she was critical of the Roe decision.

“My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,” Ginsburg said. She would’ve preferred that abortion rights be secured more gradually, in a process that included state legislatures and the courts, she added. Ginsburg also was troubled that the focus on Roe was on a right to privacy, rather than women’s rights.”

She was pointing out both the 10^th Amendment of the United States Constitution had been violated by mentioning the states and correctly referencing it was a decision that had nothing whatsoever to with women’s rights.
Amendment X of the United States Constitution states:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.”

In order for something to be Constitutional, it must be found in the Constitution. Congress cannot simply write laws as they see fit. They must fall within the constraints of what authority they have.

Being a federalist system gives states tremendous power and a free hand to do a great deal, as long as it is not exercising something that is prohibited to them by either the federal government or the individual liberties guaranteed.

The Roe decision was forced to fit into the 14^th Amendment, which was one three anti-slavery amendments written following American Civil War, since it was the closest they could find to making their decision fit the Constitution without actually fitting what was written.

Amendment XIV states:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several states according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each state, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive and judicial officers of a state, or the members of the legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such state, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such state.

Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any state, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any state, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 1 is where due process is found, but nothing about privacy of any kind or anything medically related. As former Justice Ginsburg pointed out, the decision had nothing to do with women’s rights. It was about a doctor’s privacy, which cannot be found in the 14^th Amendment.

From News Week:

“Ginsburg was in essence disagreeing with Roe‘s base argument that the right to abortion was based on the privacy of a woman with her doctor, and not a violation of equal protection as guaranteed by the Constitution.”

The entire argument of abortion supporters based on choice has nothing to do with the actual Roe v. Wade decision, since there was nothing about choice included in the decision. It was a mandate that all states allow doctors privacy with their patients, which cannot be found in the 14^th Amendment or any other part of the Constitution.

If something is not in the Constitution, it is left to the states and the people of the states. Nothing related to the Roe argument, as former Justice Ginsburg made clear, was about equal protection of anyone and had nothing to do with choice of any kind.

Roe was a flawed decision that should have been overturned years ago.