Today is the 41st anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in the United States. Over at TPM Cafe, Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which fights many anti-abortion state measures in court, argues: “People are fed up. They’re speaking out. And — for the first time in a long time — there are signs that a critical mass of our representatives in Congress is listening.”
Following that, Jessica Arons of the Reproductive Health Technologies Project argues that many anti-abortion policies are about making life harder for poor women: “in a perverse irony, Congress denies coverage for abortion care to women enrolled in Medicaid, our government’s health insurance program for the poor, under a policy known as the Hyde Amendment.”
And TPM’s Sahil Kapur points out that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a fierce defender of women’s rights, actually hates Roe v. Wade: “Her pique is that the Roe opinion, written by Justice Harry Blackmun, relies on a “right of privacy” under the 4th Amendment and emphasizes the right of physicians to practice medicine as they see fit. She prefers that abortion rights be recognized under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, based on the view that having a child should be a woman’s choice.”
