What if Roberts or Alito Had Made Ginsburg’s Abortion Comment?
PoliticsDaily
When I read Melinda Henneberger’s piece about the NY Times story, I emailed her “jaw. on. floor.”
Yet Melinda’s piece – in which she clearly tried to give Bazelon the benefit of the doubt and the chance to defend herself – did not elicit either outrage from the public or a word of explanation from The New York Times.
Frankly, I don’t know if the Manhattan-bound denizens of the Times even know that it is shocking and horrific for someone to suggest aborting fetuses because their parents are poor. They probably don’t know anyone who is poor, or who believes that abortion is the taking of a life.
The insularity of the New York Times allows a sitting member of the U.S. Supreme Court to publicly suggest that abortions are good for cutting back on the number of poor people without blinking an eye.
Word for word, here’s what Justice Ginsburg said in the story: “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.”
Ginsburg’s “populations that we don’t want to have too many of” is clearly referring back to her answer to the previous question in which she responded, “So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often.”
Stop reading and think about this for a minute. Ginsburg said that she thought Roe v. Wade would answer “concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.”
Like I said to Melinda: Jaw. On. Floor.
Can you IMAGINE how the liberal media would react if a conservative justice – Alito or Roberts – mentioned killing off more poor people to help create economic equality in America? But when it’s a woman and a liberal justice, they treat her with kid gloves at best, or at worst don’t even notice her offensive comments.
I’m a conservative Republican, but I have worked for several mainstream media outlets, and can say from first-hand knowledge that the liberal bias in most newsrooms is real and overt. I was generally the only Republican in the newsrooms of ABC and NBC News.
I don’t think that reporters are deliberately biased in their stories; rather, I think that they really don’t understand other points of view because their worlds are so small. They all live in the same neighborhoods in New York and Washington, send their kids to the same schools, socialize with each other, and remain blind to the issues and values of Americans in the “fly-over states” between L.A. and N.Y.
The proof is that when the editors of The New York Times published this article by Bazelon – who has made a career of writing in support of abortion rights – they didn’t even realize they owed readers a line of explanation that the “reporter” had a strong liberal political agenda. Bazelon writes: “I first met Justice Ginsburg a year ago, when she invited me to her chambers and to a tea” and then for a rare 90-minute sit-down interview. In fact, Bazelon seems to have been picked for tea and crumpets with the justice because her well-known views mirror Ginsburg’s, and she comes from a famous legal family. The cherry on the feminist sundae? Betty Friedan, the co-founder of the National Organization for Women, was her cousin.
Aren’t reporters supposed to give full disclosure if they have a connection or agenda related to their subject? The New York Times gives no explanation of why Bazelon was granted this unfettered access to Ginsburg – clearly timed to come out when confirmation hearings for President Obama’s first Supreme Court nominee would start in the Senate. Nor did the paper so much as hint that Bazelon has written extensively in support of abortion rights — though in a piece just last year, she made getting an abortion sound like about as big a deal as getting a mole removed: “Sometimes an abortion is a few not ideal hours that give you the rest of your life back-nothing more.”
The New York Times owed their readers at least some of these biographical details, just as Ginsburg owes the public an explanation of her comments. If it would help, I’d be glad to organize a trip with Justice Ginsburg, Bazelon and her editors to meet some children born into low-income families who are pretty glad they weren’t aborted to save the public some money on the welfare payments that we mean and heartless conservatives are supposed to hate.
