Concurring with Justice Ginsburg

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was interviewed on MSNBC last night.

MSNBC: You’ve been a champion of reproductive freedom. How does it feel when you look across the country and you see states passing restrictions that make it inaccessible, if not technically illegal?

Ginsburg: Inaccessible to poor women. It’s not true that it’s inaccessible to women of means and that’s the crying shame. We will never see a day when women of means are not able to get a safe abortion in this country. There are states – take the worst case, suppose Roe v. Wade is overruled – there will still be a number of states that will not go back to old ways.

             Maryland is one of those states.

If you’re older than 40, you’ll remember that in 1991 we passed a law adopting the holding of Roe v. Wade.  The next year, the voters approved it on referendum, 62-38%.

Consequently, if Roe is overruled, nothing will change in Maryland because that law will be on the books.

That other states did not follow our lead demonstrates how poorly organized liberals are.  Contrast that with the voter ID laws in more than a dozen red states.

I shared the Ginsburg quote with my colleagues who were the pro-choice floor leaders in 1991, as I was, (Senators Barbara Hoffman and Paula Hollinger and Delegate Larry LaMotte) and with the leading lobbyist for the bill.

“Saw the interview & it sounded like she was on the floor with us when we fought the good fight!” responded former Senator Hollinger.

“I glow with pride at what we were able to do together to secure and strengthen reproductive rights for all women in Maryland,” wrote Steven Rivelis, the lobbyist for Planned Parenthood.

For me, it’s the bill that will touch more lives than any other legislation I’ve worked on.

And I’m sending this blog to my niece, Rachel, because it’s her generation and the ones that follow that will benefit from knowing that we fought and won this good fight.

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