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Some social media users have seized on a quote excerpted from a decade-old interview to accuse U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg -- and by extension those who support keeping abortion legal -- as advocating for eugenics. The statement was taken from a July 2009 interview published in the New York Times Magazine, during which Ginsburg said: 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. Ginsburg's remark was disseminated online not only in text, but as a graphic: Another version of the meme, reproducing the quote under a caption reading abortion logic 101, was shared thousands of times on Facebook after being posted on the social media network in June 2018: However, the graphic did not represent the entirety of the exchange between Ginsburg and reporter Emily Bazelon concerning the justice's belief that reproductive choice laws in the U.S. needed to be straightened out so that economic factors would not influence a woman's ability to seek an abortion: In an op-ed published three years later, Bazelon apologized for not following up on her question and asking Ginsburg to clarify her stance, adding: Bazelon's follow-up piece also included her account of a second interview she conducted with Ginsburg during an appearance by the justice at Yale University: The group Ginsburg referenced during her appearance, Zero Population Growth (ZPG), was founded in 1968. From 1975 to 1977, ZPG was headed by anti-immigration activist John Tanton, who advocated for what he called passive eugenics. In that context, and given her record, Ginsburg's original remark was a description of ZPG's philosophy and not her own. In 2002, ZPG renamed itself Population Connection, saying on its website that the media avoided using us as a helpful resource, and members of Congress were wary of meeting with us and our members because we sounded to them like an extremist group. The site now includes no mention of Tanton. Ginsburg has said that while she supported the High Court's 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, she did not feel it went far enough in protecting women's rights. During a 2013 appearance at the University of Chicago she noted, Roe isn't really about the woman's choice, is it? It's about the doctor's freedom to practice ... It wasn't woman-centered, it was physician-centered.
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