While this was briefly highlighted earlier today in the "Abbreviated Pundit Round-Up", I felt a little more sunshine needed to be shined on whatever crawled up Michael Gerson's rear end. He wrote a truly appalling, malicious and almost wholly delusional attack on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the pro-choice movement for Friday's Washington Post. Normally, I pooh-pooh the MSM-bashing 'look at-the-bad-pundit' diaries, but I think Michael Gerson's column is one the most dishonest I've ever read.
In his column, as noted in the Pundit Round-Up, Gerson deliberately omitted a couple of sentences from Justice Ginsburg's comments, in hopes of spinning them into something mean-spirited, bigoted and thoroughly elitist. Really, Gerson flips the Justice's comments totally upside-down, since she was referring to her own prior perceptions of conservatives -- not her reasons for her own pro-choice views.
I suppose one might wonder whether Gerson is that obtuse, or whether he was deliberately trying to libel the Justice and fellow feminists. Gerson took Ginsburg's candid discussion of her misguided impression of anti-abortion advocates and tried to spin it into a personal expression of support for the pro-choice position based on eugenics.
Yes, Gerson is taking some heat for his column -- here, the criticism focused on his butchering of her remarks. But, I think it deserves more criticism, especially more than one-line in one story on this site. I think it's important to point out that even Gerson's redacted version doesn't support his vile aspersions on the unimpeachable character of this long-time crusader for equal justice under the law. It's also important to rebut this 100% bogus attack on the motives and attitudes of pro-choice liberals.
First -- for anyone who doesn't know what I'm referring to, a little background. Justice Ginsburg was interviewed for the New York Times Magazine. She was asked about a "future feminist agenda." She replied (and I'm editing her comment down, for space reasons only):
JUSTICE GINSBURG: "Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women....."
The interviewer tried to clarify her meaning -- I guess, for those who aren't familiar with all the issues involved -- asking...
Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women?
Now the "money quote", in full -- what Justice Ginsburg actually said, in reply:
JUSTICE GINSBURG: "Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong."
Here's what Gerson quoted:
Justice Ginsburg: "Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae -- in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don't want to have too many of. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion."
Gerson follows this redacted quote with this curious statement:
A statement like this should not be taken out of context.
Yet, that's exactly what he's done, so that he can argue Ginsburg and.or other pro-choice liberals have been advocating some form of twisted classist, eugenics-based public policy.
Focus on what he left out:
"But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong."
Clearly, Ginsburg is referring to some perception she had, which she realized was wrong when the conservatives upheld the federal ban on Medicaid-funded abortions. What perception? Here we have to read in just a bit, but if we do it's obvious she's implying she thought that conservative opposition to abortion wasn't entirely principled -- that they might walk away from it to accomplish other, more dearly held objectives. Apparently, Ginsburg thought conservatives fear of burgeoning minority populations would prove more powerful than their desire to control and restrict women's reproductive rights.
When you walk backwards through the full paragraph -- from the mention of her "altogether wrong" perception to the reference to "concern about population growth" in "populations that we don't want to have too many of" -- it should be obvious that Ginsburg is saying she misunderstood the nature of the pro-lifers on the Supreme Court. Basically, she's saying they deserve more more credit for their principled belief than she realized. And, possibly, that the may not be as pathologically racist and xenophobic as she imagined.
In Gerson's twisted mind "it is not bloody likely" that Ginsburg was referring to attitudes of conservatives. Rather, he insists that
"It is more likely that Ginsburg is describing the attitude of some of her own social class -- that abortion is economically important to a "woman of means" and useful in reducing the number of social undesirables.
Gerson doesn't stop with just this asinine interpretation that twists Ginsburg's description of political opponents to a classist, possibly racist view. Nope -- in case his vile implication wasn't clear enough, he pollutes the waters further by asking:
"Who, in Ginsburg's statement, is the "we"?"
Gerson wants the reader to believe "we" referred to the educated, well-off white liberal women (perhaps even some men) who were often at the forefront of the pro-choice movement. And, he isn't too subtle in leading readers to make the leap that Ginsburg might even have been describing herself and her own concerns. Certainly, if you wade through the morass of about 1,000 comments posted to this article, more than a few readers made that intuitive leap.
Gerson helps them make that leap, with an incomprehensible assertion that
Justice Ginsburg's comments display
"a disturbing insensitivity to Supreme Court history....(particularly including)...the 1927 decision approving forced sterilization for Carrie Buck -- a 17-year-old single mother judged to be feebleminded and morally delinquent."
If you have half a brain, you would understand that Ginsburg wasn't talking about her attitude, since she had very different reasons for supporting the right to choose and funding for the poor. She was focused on the emancipation of women and gender-equality in society roles. Birth-control, and even abortion rights, were seen as means to that end. She wasn't talking about purportedly elitist attitudes of her supposed "class".
Ginsburg was describing what she sees now as simplistic or false attitudes she once held -- not towards the poor, but towards pro-life conservatives. She thought they would be guided more by their bigotry and xenophobia. She learned they were far more rigid (perhaps even principled) in their total opposition to legal abortion than she expected.
Even if you read only Gerson's out-of-context, shortened quotation, you could still understand Justice Ginsburg's meaning. Many of the comments to the article have taken him to task for his distortion. Still, others have bought into this libelous fiction.
If Gerson had come ought and said he believes Ginsburg was motivated by what he charitably labels "elitism", it would be libelous. Instead, he is coy enough to let readers do it for him. What he does do all on his own is malign the motivations of liberalism and the pro-choice movement. That is its own form of libel.
He posits that the Hyde Amendment saved the lives of a million "undesirables". And, he says that fact poses a
"defining question for modern liberalism: Are these men and women "populations that we don't want to have too many of" or are they citizens worthy of justice and capable of contribution?"
Of course, that's only a question if you accept his premise that "liberals" don't agree these are "citizens worthy of justice and capable of contribution," and also accept his premise that the pro-choice movement was ever motivated by such despicable elitism. Anyone with half a brain knows liberals fight for programs to assist children in circumstances of economic need, whereas conservatives generally work to limit such aid. That fact alone belies Gerson's premise. Similarly, when liberals advocate for affirmative action and conservatives try to rally white voters, claiming it is a form of discrimination -- that also belies Gerson's fundamental premise. But Gerson isn't interested in a real argument. He's just aiming to agitate and slander good people.
He did achieve one aim: He did slander good people like Justice Ginsburg and those who have fought beside her in the pro-choice movement. It's easy to see the despicable one in this 'teapot tempest' -- it's Michael Gerson.