Genocide and Roe v Wade

Today is the 42nd anniversary of the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade.

The accusation is sometimes made that abortion is a form of genocide, especially aimed at the African American population. The Rev. Dr. Clenard H Childress Jr.'s Black Genocide web site is a leading example. A summery of his key arguments is is here.  It is pointed out deaths caused by abortion in the African American population is proportionally several times that in the white population, and it is claimed that this is the result of a deliberate policy and not just the result of a "pattern and pratice" or coincidence.


 The July 7, 2009 edition of the New York Times carried an interview on The Place of Women on the Court with Justice of the United States Ruth Bader Ginsburg  which provides a good place to start..

  Q: If you were a lawyer again, what would you want to accomplish as a future feminist legal agenda? 

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that had changed their abortion laws before Roe [to make abortion legal] are not going to change back. So we have a policy that affects only poor women, and it can never be otherwise, and I don’t know why this hasn’t been said more often. 

 Q: Are you talking about the distances women have to travel because in parts of the country, abortion is essentially unavailable, because there are so few doctors and clinics that do the procedure? And also, the lack of Medicaid for abortions for poor women? 

 JUSTICE GINSBURG: Yes, the ruling about that surprised me. [Harris v. McRae — in 1980 the court upheld the Hyde Amendment, which forbids the use of Medicaid for abortions.] 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. So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion. Which some people felt would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn’t really want them. But when the court decided McRae, the case came out the other way. And then I realized that my perception of it had been altogether wrong. 

Q: When you say that reproductive rights need to be straightened out, what do you mean? 

 JUSTICE GINSBURG: The basic thing is that the government has no business making that choice for a woman. Emphsis is mine.

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 N. B. To be fair to Justice Ginsburg (who was not on the court when the case was decided) it is not clear whether she is saying that she herself supported using the combination of Medicaid and abortion to reduce “populations we do not want to many of.” Clearly her stated opinion now is that abortion should only be an individual choice for a woman.
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 But it is also clear testimony from a reliable source that there was significant approval in some political and judicial circles for deliberately using abortion and Medicaid to harm populations “we do not want to many of“. Nor does she seem upset, that instead of protecting groups that some how meet the disapproval of the upper echelons of society the US government and especially the Supreme Court should help harm them. One can't help but wonder how she would handle an a certiorari petition from a member of group "we do want to many of."

Along with Justice Ginsburg, I remember that there was concern about population growth for supporting legalized abortion, the arguments supporting this reminded me of the Nazi arguments for the policy lebensraum of which the Holocaust was the most prominent part, but with a much better sugar coating.

The strong emphasis by the current administration that abortion and contraception benefits be included in the "Affordable Health Care Act" (Obamcare) at no cost to women seems to be a resurrection of the concept; this time combing Abortion and Obamacare to reduce populations "we do not want too many of"

Who are these groups "we do not want to many of." Justice Ginsburg does not seem to have identified them. Given the history of race relations in the United States it is not surprising that many people feel that she was using “a code word” for African Americans among others.   "Reducing populations we do not want to many of" seems like an understated description of the the Holocaust, Gulag, Cambodia's killing fields and the Rwandan genocide. Some of the more polemical comments would put her in the figurative ranks of the KKK and the SS, though as I noted she does not seem to have commented on whether or not she approves.


 African Americans are a group that is protected under the CONVENTION ON THE PREVENTION AND PUNISHMENT OF THE CRIME OF GENOCIDE, ADOPTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE UNITED NATIONS ON 9 DECEMBER 1948 and Ratified by the Senate on 25/11/1988 to take effect 23/02/1989 Of course Roe v Wade was decided before the US adopted the Convention, But people had been tried and convicted for Genocide before the convention was approved by the UN and the implementation of Roe v Wade is continuing..

 Let's look at what the convention says:

[G]enocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such :

 a) Killing members of the group;

 . . .

 (f) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

By the Convention Abortion per se is not genocide, but it can used a a means to kill members of a protected group and/or prevent births in a protected group; which would be genocide.  At the very least "imposing measures intended to prevent births" sounds similar to what Justice Ginsburg was saying about reducing populations "we do not want to many of."

The key legal phrase in the Convention's definition is "intent to destroy, in whole or in part,"  One of the motivations for the action must be "intent to destroy, in whole or in part." The same action taken without this motivation may be legal or illegal on other grounds, but it is not the crime of Genocide.

 Justice Ginsburg provides us with a reasonable suspicion,  from a reliable source, that Roe v Wade was intended to and is being used to commit genocide.  The question comes down to what are the targeted groups and what are the motivations of the key players. The proponents of abortion and Roe v Wade have always been careful to publicly state other motivations. As noted Justice Ginsburg  states
 that her only motivation is the protection of women's rights.

Are there other publicly unstated illegal motivations?

 A discovery or Grand Jury process would certainly be interesting, if some official had the political courage to start one.

Abortion posts :

Cause Not Harm
Roe vs. Wade - Choice
When Oh Lord When
Criss Cross: Democrats Republicans and Abortion
Jenny Change Your Mind
Roe v Wade is absurd


Related Posts

Death by Government
Never Again and Again and Again
Rwanda and Darfur Compared

More information.

UN Convention on Genocide
What is Genocide

R J Rummel's Power Kills site
Genocide Watch

My Genocide posts


Crisis Pregnancy Resources

Clarence Thomas: The Stealth Justice

During the Justice Thomas nomination hearings one of the things I noted was Judge Thomas said his main legal interests were business regulation and constitional jurisprudence. He would rather have been appointed to a business regulation position in the first Bush administration than an agency Civil Rights Counsel. The Senate confirmed a nominee with a publicly stated interest in business regulation while barely asking him a question on the subject and slightly more on constitional  jurisprudence. Strange priorities by the committee.  I suspect that if he had been asked questions and answered the them as written in his later decisions, he might have lost some conserative support and maybe the four vote margin by which he was confirmed.  Making him the Stealth Justice, these may well be the areas he has the most influnce on the future of American Jurisprudence. 
Justice Thomas’ opening statement to Senate committee on the Anita Hill allegations. 10 minutes but worth watching.


Jeffery Toobin writing in the The New Yorker looks at the role of Justice Thomas on the Supreme Court.  Partners: Will Clarence and Virginia Thomas succeed in killing Obama’s health-care plan?  While he does not agree with Justice Thomas on many levels this is a fair and balanced survey and he intends it as a warning to other liberals.



Walter Russell Mead gives us a succinct summary (New Blue Nightmare: Clarence Thomas and the Amendment of Doom) of the lenghty article and the implications’ for the Supreme Court.

Jeffrey Toobin’s gripping, must-read profile of Clarence and Virginia Thomas in the New Yorker gives readers new insight into what Sauron must have felt: Toobin argues that the only Black man in public life that liberals could safely mock and despise may be on the point of bringing the Blue Empire down.

In fact, Toobin suggests, Clarence Thomas may be the Frodo Baggins of the right; his lonely and obscure struggle has led him to the point from which he may be able to overthrow the entire edifice of the modern progressive state.

snip

There are few articles of faith as firmly fixed in the liberal canon as the belief that Clarence Thomas is, to put it as bluntly as many liberals do, a dunce and a worm. Twenty years of married life have not erased the conventional liberal view of his character etched by Anita Hill’s testimony at his confirmation hearings. Not only does the liberal mind perceive him as a disgusting lump of ungoverned sexual impulse; he is seen as an intellectual cipher. Thomas’ silence during oral argument before the Supreme Court is taken as obvious evidence that he has nothing to say and is perhaps a bit intimidated by the verbal fireworks exchanged by the high profile lawyers and his more, ahem, ‘qualified’ colleagues.

Snip

Toobin is less interested in exploring why liberal America has been so blind for so long to the force of Clarence Thomas’ intellect than in understanding just what Thomas has achieved in his lonely trek across the wastes of Mordor. And what he finds is that Thomas has been pioneering the techniques and the ideas that could not only lead to the court rejecting all or part of President Obama’s health legislation; the ideas and strategies Thomas has developed could conceivably topple the constitutionality of the post New Deal state.

Justice Thomas’ influence is summarized in three areas.

In the case of the Second Amendment, the collapse has already come. Back in my Pundit High days, anyone who dared to suggest that the Bill of Rights gave individuals the right to bear arms would have been laughed out of the class as an ignorant yahoo. These days, that is the accepted view of the US Supreme Court and most of the legal profession.

snip

The next topic for Constitutional revisionism is the expansive reading of the commerce clause that the New Deal judges used to justify the Roosevelt administration’s ambitious economic programs.  Especially relevant to the President's Health Care (sic) initiative.

Snip

The real problem will come if Thomas can figure out how to get the Tenth Amendment back into constitutional thought in a serious way.

His method seems to be avoiding the usual give and take of the Court and to write dissents or concurrences that present a well researched and argued rational that is very different different from the Courts decision.  Some trial and appellate judges seem have found these more relevant for later cases than the Courts decision.  A stealth stratagy that could have impact for decades after he leaves the court.

I have always thought that Justice Thomas, like him or not, was vastly under rated.  I would encourage you to read the articles, not just to learn about Justice Thomas but some of the key legal issues that will come before the Supreme Court.

Updated 4 Sept 2011