Beck distorts Ginsburg's remarks on abortion

Beck distorted comments Ginsburg made to suggest she supports “cleansing” America of “unwanted populations.” On the July 16 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck, guest Alveda King falsely claimed that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “made some statements” confirming “that there is a whole genocide movement who's trying to sterilize or abort or eliminate certain members of the population.” Beck agreed with King, adding that Ginsburg recently made “a revealing admission in favor of cleansing of America of unwanted populations by aborting them.”

From the July 16 edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck:

KING: Reparations in that there's enough in America, there's enough on the planet for us all to live peacefully together and have. It is not the responsibility of the taxpayers. You're a taxpayer. You're a taxpayer. I'm a taxpayer. We should not pay for reparations. The harm should be corrected by the people who did the injustice and is still going on today. There's a whole genocide movement today who's trying to sterilize or abort or eliminate certain members of the population. Justice Ginsburg made some statements that confirmed that.

BECK: Yeah. Hang on --

KING: So, it's these big rich companies who pay for genocide that need to stop; they need to repent. They need to stop killing and they need to start affirming life. And they're so rich -- they're so rich.

[...]

BECK: When you say Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently made a revealing decision -- or revealing admission in favor of cleansing of America of unwanted populations by aborting them. You're talking about unwanted populations. That's amazing to me.

STEPHEN BRODEN (GOP congressional candidate): She wasn't talking about the white population.

BECK: Yeah. My -- yeah. I don't care what color they are. I mean, my son -- my son could be classified as unwanted. He's adopted.

KING: (unintelligible)

BECK: Yeah. And that's abhorrent. You're talking about Margaret Sanger kind of --

BRODEN: Absolutely.

BECK: -- where they -- where she was targeting -- and they're still doing it.

KING: And it comes in all colors. That movement comes in all colors. It's not a color thing.

In fact, Ginsburg was attributing that sentiment to others

Ginsburg was saying “some people felt [Roe] would risk coercing women into having abortions when they didn't really want them.” While discussing Roe v. Wade during a July 7, 2009, New York Times interview, Ginsburg stated 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.”

From The New York Times Magazine interview:

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.

Beck, other right-wing media have previously distorted Ginsburg's comments on abortion

Beck, Limbaugh, right-wing websites hyped claim that Ginsburg thought purpose of Roe was to eliminate “undesirables.” On his radio show, Beck previously distorted Ginsburg's comments on abortion to claim that she “thought Roe v. Wade was a way to weed out undesirables.” Beck added: “I thought this was about a woman's right to choose. No, the progressives believe and always have -- look up the history of Planned Parenthood -- that it is a way to weed out undesirables. Now we have a Supreme Court justice who said, yeah, well that was pretty much my philosophy.” Other right-wing media figures and outlets -- including Rush Limbaugh, Fox Nation, National Review Online, and WorldNetDaily -- also advanced this distortion.