Justice Ginsburg assails Supreme Court for viewing 'the woman as not really an adult individual'

Justice Ginsburg assails Supreme Court for viewing &#039;the woman as not really an adult individual&#039;

(Image credit: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has some choice words for the Supreme Court's handling of women's issues, saying in an interview with The New Republic that in at least one case, some justices acted as if women were incapable of making decisions for themselves.

Speaking of her dissent in Gonzalez v. Carhart, Ginsburg says:

That was in a partial-birth abortion case. And there what concerned me about the Court's attitude, they were looking at the woman as not really an adult individual. The opinion said that the woman would live to regret her choice. That was not anything this Court should have thought or said. Adult women are able to make decisions about their own lives' course no less than men are. So, yes, I thought in Carhart the Court was way out of line. It was a new form of "Big Brother must protect the woman against her own weakness and immature misjudgment." [The New Republic]

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Jon Terbush is an associate editor at TheWeek.com covering politics, sports, and other things he finds interesting. He has previously written for Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, and Business Insider.

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