The Center for Reproductive Rights extends its condolences to the
Justice's family and mourns this extraordinary loss for the Court and
the
country. ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌
Center for Reproductive Rights - ReproductiveRights.org
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Dear team,
The death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg marks the
passing of a legal giant who devoted her life to advancing the liberty
and equality of women, first as a litigator and later as an appellate
and then Supreme Court Justice. Her clear, unwavering conviction that
women must be given equal treatment under the law changed the legal
rights of half the nation.
Justice Ginsburg was a lifelong champion of gender equality. As an
attorney in the 1970s, she won major victories before the Supreme
Court outlawing sex discrimination. And early in her tenure on the
Supreme Court, she authored the majority opinion in U.S. v. Virginia
(1996), striking down the Virginia Military Institute's men-only
admissions policy, establishing protections against gender
stereotyping that we continue to depend on to this day.
Justice Ginsburg understood that women need control over their
fertility and fair treatment during pregnancy if we are to achieve
gender equality. As an attorney, she represented a woman who was
forcibly discharged from the Air Force because she was pregnant, and
authored a groundbreaking brief that connected the constitutional
rights to liberty and equality in a single right to "equal autonomy."
Justice Ginsburg understood that access to abortion care implicated "a
woman's autonomy to determine her life's course." She made that clear
at her 1993 Supreme Court nomination hearing. Unlike today, when
judicial nominees evade questions about whether they agree with the
holding of Roe v. Wade, Justice Ginsburg was unequivocal. She
testified forthrightly that the Constitution protects a woman's "right
to decide whether or not to bear a child," which she explained is
"central to a woman's life [and] to her dignity."
During her twenty-seven years on the Court, Justice Ginsburg was an
impassioned voice for reproductive rights. In 2016, she joined the
landmark decision reaffirming the Constitution's protection of the
right to access abortion in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt
(2016), and wrote her own forceful concurring opinion condemning
medically unjustified abortion regulations that "do little or nothing
for health, but rather strew impediments to abortion."
She reaffirmed that decision this year in June Medical Services v.
Russo (2020), which struck down a law identical to the law at issue in
Whole Woman's Health, as part of a five-justice majority reiterating
that these laws impose severe burdens on pregnant people.
When the Supreme Court ruled against reproductive rights, Justice
Ginsburg authored unflinching dissents. In Gonzales v. Carhart (2007)
she refuted the majority's assumptions about "women's fragile
emotional state" as "reflect[ing] ancient notions about women's place
in the family and under the Constitution ideas that have long since
been discredited." She also warned against undermining the rule of law
if the Court, upon a change in membership, ignores its own precedent,
stating: "the Court, differently composed than it was when we last
considered a restrictive abortion regulation, is hardly faithful to
our earlier invocations of the rule of law." And her dissent in
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014) rejected the majority's decision
weakening the Affordable Care Act's birth control coverage guarantee,
emphasizing that access to contraception advances public health and
women's well-being.
Even in the last 13 years, Justice Ginsburg had to lay out again and
again how pregnancy discrimination is sex discrimination. In a 2009
dissent, she wrote that "[c]ertain attitudes about pregnancy and
childbirth, throughout human history, have sustained pervasive, often
law-sanctioned, restrictions on a woman's place among paid workers and
active citizens." And in a 2012 dissent, she explained that
"[D]iscrimination against women... is tightly interwoven with
society's beliefs about motherhood." Her dissenting opinion in
Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (2007) in support of a female
employee's pay discrimination lawsuit inspired Congress to enact the
Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act effectively reversing the Court
majority's decision, and making Ginsburg's opinion law.
Justice Ginsburg also recognized that racial injustice and
discrimination are hardly things of the past. When the Court's
majority gutted a key component of the Voting Rights Act in Shelby
County v. Holder (2013), she authored a fiery dissent, arguing that
weakening the law when it "is continuing to work to stop
discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a
rainstorm because you are not getting wet."
Justice Ginsburg's death creates a vacancy on the Supreme Court at an
already fraught time for millions of people, who are counting on a
fair and independent Court to serve as a check on an extreme agenda to
turn back the clock on women's ability to control their reproductive
lives. Since 2011, abortion opponents in state legislatures have
pushed through more than 450 harmful laws designed to make it
virtually impossible for people to access abortion care in their
communities. Dozens of legal challenges to abortion restrictions are
currently pending in federal and state courts.
Justice Ginsburg's friend and colleague Justice Antonin Scalia noted
that in the law of women's rights, Ginsburg was "the Thurgood Marshall
of that cause." Her seat should be filled by a Justice who carries
forward the vision of a fair, equal, and just society under law.
Onward,
Nancy Northup
President & CEO
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The Center for Reproductive Rights uses the power of law to advance reproductive rights as fundamental human rights around the world.
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