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]
Also in the interview, Ginsburg says that when she joined the Court, she wanted to take it "step by step to the realization... that the pedestal on which some thought women were standing all too often turned out to be a cage."
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Over the summer, Ginsburg made headlines for saying her male colleagues had a "blind spot" on women's issues.
Read the full interview here.
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