Ginsburg a Eugenicist?

Here is a great interview with Justice Ginsburg by Emily Bazelon for the New York Times Magazine. The entire interview is quite fascinating, as Ginsburg discuss her view of women on the court, as well as touching on her views of affirmative actions and equal rights for women. The quote that is getting attention on the blogosphere 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.

Some are claiming that Ginsburg is making a eugenic argument. Specifically, that she believed the purpose of Roe v Wade was to rid of us the population growth "in populations that we don’t want to have too many of." It is not at all clear here what she means, but I suspect it was much clearer live, when her inflection could be heard. There are two possible readings of the quotation. The first is that Ginsburg herself believed and supported the eugenic argument. That is, that abortions for poor people are good, because then we have fewer "undesirables." That other reading is that Ginsburg thought the court was making a eugenic argument--not one that she agreed with--but realized later that she was mistaken about that.