This coming Sunday’s The New York Times Magazine will publish an interview with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg entitled The Place of Women on the Court. [HERE] In part, it offers her exhortation encouraging the confirmation to the Supreme Court of Judge Sonia Sotomayor. In part, it is a revealing insight into the kind of woman, person, and human being that are Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Inevitably, questions about abortion and the law and Constitutional issues dealing with this issue surfaced during the interview. The following exchange between Justice Ginsburg and the interviewer divulges a great deal about the kind of woman, person, and human being that Ruth Bader Ginsburg is:
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.
Q: Does that mean getting rid of the test the court imposed, in which it allows states to impose restrictions on abortion — like a waiting period — that are not deemed an “undue burden” to a woman’s reproductive freedom?
JUSTICE GINSBURG: I’m not a big fan of these tests. I think the court uses them as a label that accommodates the result it wants to reach. It will be, it should be, that this is a woman’s decision. It’s entirely appropriate to say it has to be an informed decision, but that doesn’t mean you can keep a woman overnight who has traveled a great distance to get to the clinic, so that she has to go to some motel and think it over for 24 hours or 48 hours.
I still think, although I was much too optimistic in the early days, that the possibility of stopping a pregnancy very early is significant. The morning-after pill will become more accessible and easier to take. So I think the side that wants to take the choice away from women and give it to the state, they’re fighting a losing battle. Time is on the side of change…
I have emphasized two portions of the Justice’s response to different questions about abortion. Her two answers, in one sense, do not seem to be consistent with one another. On the one hand, she viewed Roe as the means of controlling population, “particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.” I wonder what are those populations “that we don’t want to have too many of”? On the other hand, she asserts that the government has no role in making decisions about a woman’s “reproductive rights.” But, if she means that the state has no role in stopping a woman from having an abortion for any reason or no reason, then the two statements become more coherent with each other. In any case, she did not retract her views about population control and using government moneys to fund abortion—for that would not take away women’s “reproductive rights.” It seems that from her perspective, “reproductive rights” and population control may not be in conflict with one another. And, if this is indeed the case, we have learned a great deal about what kind of woman, person, and human being Ruth Bader Ginsburg is.
Recommended reading: Jane Gross, "Facing Death with Dignity," NYT, 7/9/09. The byline: "A congregation of sisters outside of Rochester offers a model for successful aging and a gentle death." An excerpt: "A convent is a world apart, unduplicable. But the Sisters of St.
Joseph, a congregation in this Rochester suburb, animate many factors
that studies say contribute to successful aging and a gentle death —
none of which require this special setting. These include a large
social network, intellectual stimulation, continued engagement in life
and spiritual beliefs, as well as health care guided by the
less-is-more principles of palliative and hospice care — trends that are moving from the fringes to the mainstream." Read the rest, here.
UPDATE: A reader responds:
"I saw your post on 'Facing Death with Dignity.' I thought I would add a personal
note that as a part-time practitioner in estate planning, I am starting to see
requests for palliative care and related provisions in the health care aspects.
And, even in cases where I mention the availability of such care, many are
motivated to investigate the meaning of it further, and then to request it."
UPDATE #2:
At the moment, this is the most e-mailed article in today's NYT. Hmmm ...
Michael P. says, "I have expressed skepticism, in much of my work over the past several years, that the claim that every human being has inherent dignity and is inviolable can be embedded in a secular world view." I too am similarly skeptical.
Which bring us to Steve Shiffrin's thought provoking comment and question: "I wonder about the utility of arguing that Catholic social thought is politically (as opposed to theologically) superior to all forms of secular liberalism. Does such a claim contradict the claim of Catholic social thought to appeal to all human beings?" Some initial thoughts. First, the various forms of secular liberalism will have kernals of truth (otherwise they wouldn't be attractive), and the Catholic ought to be open and willing to learn from the secularist. Second, to the extent that the Catholic Church has a realistic anthropology, the claims of CST and Catholic legal theory ought to be accessable to non-believers through freflection and experience whether or not we assert its superiority.
(As a law student, I took a class from then-Professor, now-Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and if memory serves, it was the very first class she taught after joining the Columbia law faculty.)
1. Liberal democracy, understood as democracy committed *both* to the inherent dignity and inviolability of every human being *and* to certain human rights, is something, I say again, we all here do affirm.
2. Liberal democracy, thus understood, does not assert, entail, or presuppose a particular moral anthropology--though it does assert the inherent dignity and inviolability of every human being.
3. Many who affirm liberal democracy typically also affirm (at least implicitly) a moral anthropology--though not all who do so affirm the same moral anthropology.
4. I have expressed skepticism, in much of my work over the past several years, that the claim that every human being has inherent dignity and is inviolable can be embedded in a secular world view.
David Gibson's
misrepresentation of the encyclical resides chiefly in
his claim that “what is clear, whether one reads every word or just
excerpts, is that the pope is a liberal, at least in American
political terms.” This is the mistake that Reese also makes. It is
true, of course, that the specific economic policies preferred by the
Pope and articulated in CV are more progressive and redistributive
than any of those on offer in America. But it is also true that the
specific social views outlined by the encyclical–pertaining to
abortion, marriage, contraception, euthanasia, and reproductive health
technology–are much more “conservative”–I place this in quotes to note
that these are really positions demanded by the natural law–than any
on offer in America.
I am aware that Gibson chose to focus on the economic aspects of the
encyclical, and it is true that if these are taken in isolation from
the anthropology that subtends them, the Pope looks something like
what in America we call a liberal. My point is simply that they cannot
be so taken, that the Christocentric anthropology on offer from the
Pope extends from conception, through the activities and structures
constituting social life, till natural death, and consequently that
the principles and policy prescriptions that follow from this
anthropology cannot be reduced--as they are reduced in Gibson, Reese,
and Weigel--to the conceptual categories of liberalism.
The ideological liberalism of these authors disintegrates what in
reality is a seamless whole: Weigel sees the "real" Benedict in those
portions of the encyclical that seem to align with conservative
liberalism, while Gibson and Reese see the "real" Benedict in those
portions that seem to align with liberal liberalism. What they all
miss, of course, is precisely the fact that the thought of Benedict--
the thought of the Church--cannot be so parsed: not because it
constitutes a reconciliation of these forms of liberalism but because
it refuses to be bound by the dictates of liberalism itself. It is
therefore quite possible that what commentators are beginning to
describe as the encyclical's disunity, its apparent inconsistency in
tone, language, and argumentation, is less a reflection on the
encyclical itself than on the interpretive assumptions of its readers.
To me it is clear that more than a thin conception of the good is needed to ground a just society. But I do not think that all liberalisms rely on a thin conception of the good. Martha Nussbaum’s conception of human flourishing is a far thicker conception of the good than that of John Rawls (though it is a secular conception). (Nussbaum is a religious Jew, but she does not believe religion should play a public role in grounding religious judgments). I wonder about the utility of arguing that Catholic social thought is politically (as opposed to theologically) superior to all forms of secular liberalism. Does such a claim contradict the claim of Catholic social thought to appeal to all human beings?
Over at the America magazine blog, Austen Ivereigh takes issue with George Weigel's system for parsing Caritas in Veritate, and surmises that there might have been at least one other major influence in the drafting: Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focolare Movement.He points out three parallels in the discussion of fraternity and gift, in the "economy of communion," and in the link between poverty and isolation. I'd like to suggest a fourth, which might contain all the rest, and which might even help us push beyond our liberal-conservative debate: the Trinity as a social model.
54.The theme of development can be identified with the inclusion-in-relation of all individuals and peoples within the one community of the human family, built in solidarity on the basis of the fundamental values of justice and peace. This perspective is illuminated in a striking way by the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity within the one divine Substance. The Trinity is absolute unity insofar as the three divine Persons are pure relationality. The reciprocal transparency among the divine Persons is total and the bond between each of them complete, since they constitute a unique and absolute unity. God desires to incorporate us into this reality of communion as well: “that they may be one even as we are one” (Jn 17:22). The Church is a sign and instrument of this unity. Relationships between human beings throughout history cannot but be enriched by reference to this divine model. In particular, in the light of the revealed mystery of the Trinity, we understand that true openness does not mean loss of individual identity but profound interpenetration.
Or as Lubich put it: “Jesus shows us that I am myself, not when I close myself off from the other, but rather when I give myself, when out of love I lose myself in the other. . . . In the relationship of the three divine Persons, each one is love, each on is completely, by not being: because each one is, perichoretically, in the other Person, in eternal self giving.”(Lubich, Essential Writings, 211-212).
The Trinity as a “social model” has been common parlance in the circles of Focolare scholars for several years now, and these conversations have served as the foundation for much of my own work and scholarship (eg, Toward a Trinitarian Theory of Products Liability).
Much of the work so far has been published in Italian, but there’s a new book just out in English by Thomas J. Norris (an Irish priest and professor of systematic theology), The Trinity: Life of God, Hope for Humanity—Towards a Theology of Communion(2009), which also includes a chapter on the connection between the Trinitarian model and the Economy of Communion.
It might be interesting to explore further whether the life of the Trinity as set out in number 54 might be something of a literary key for the entire encyclical—for example, it might be the paradigm which helps us to make sense of the discussion of the need for “gratuitousness” in economic life; and of the importance of safeguarding individual and cultural identities while at the same time helping people and peoples to forge bonds of communion with each other and across borders.
