The American Civil Liberties Union has apologized for editing the words of the late liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
But the ACLU still defended the anti-scientific rationale behind the effort to put different words in Ginsburg’s mouth.
The controversy erupted on Sept. 18 with an ACLU tweet intending to commemorate the first anniversary of Ginsburg’s death.
“With Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, we lost a champion for abortion and gender equality,” the tweet said. “And on the anniversary of her death, the fight to protect abortion access is more urgent than ever.”
But the tweet also included a quote attributed to the longtime jurist.
“The decision whether or not to bear a child,” the ACLU version said, “is central to a [person’s] life, to [their] well-being and dignity… When the government controls that decision for [people], [they are] being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for [their] own choices.”
Yet Ginsburg actually said, “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity,” she said. “It is a decision she must make for herself. When government controls that decision for her, she is being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”
Even some liberals noted the absurdity of the ACLU’s effort to cancel women.
For instance, Dave Weigel of The Washington Post tweeted, “The pronoun wars are bad and silly but editing a Ginsburg quote to remove any reference to ‘women’ looks so clumsy.”
On Monday, The New York Times reported that the longtime civil rights organization, which has veered sharply into progressive, anti-conservative politics in recent years, had apologized for the tweet.
“A.C.L.U. Apologizes for Tweet That Altered Quote by Justice Ginsburg,” the Times’ headline said, followed by a subheadline reading, “The organization acknowledged that changing references from women to people was a mistake — albeit a well-intentioned one.”
That glossed over ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero’s explanation of why the tweet was issued as it was.
“We won’t be altering people’s quotes. It was a mistake among the digital team. Changing quotes is not something we ever did,” Romero told the Times.
Yet, he added, the language revision “was not a mistake without a thought.”
“My colleagues do a fantastic job of trying to understand a reality that people who seek abortions are not only women,” Romero said. “That reality exists.”
According to the Times, the ACLU could have “touched on this emerging reality” of men being able to have children without tinkering with Ginsburg’s words.
But, Romero said, “In today’s America, language sometimes needs to be rethought.”
And apparently at the ACLU, so do biology and all of human history.
The great irony of this, as is so often found when liberals pontificate on the great issues of our time, is that just this month the ACLU reversed its stance on mandated COVID-19 vaccinations.
David Cole, the ACLU’s legal director, told The Atlantic that the organization, which misquoted Justice Ginsburg to defend abortion, dismissed claims from people refusing the vaccine on the abortion-like grounds of “bodily integrity” and “personal autonomy.”
“They’re all rights that are recognized in the Constitution,” Cole said, “but they’re not absolute rights.”
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