Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quotes & Sayings

“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 changed their abortion laws before Roe are not going to change back. So we have a policy that only affects poor women, and it can never be otherwise.”

“My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.”

“It is not women's liberation, it is women's and men's liberation.”

“The emphasis must be not on the right to abortion but on the right to privacy and reproductive control.”

“My mother told me two things constantly. One was to be a lady and the other was to be independent, and the law was something most unusual for those times because for most girls growing up in the '40s, the most important degree was not your B.A. but your M.R.S.”

“So that's the dissenter's hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.”

“The state controlling a woman would mean denying her full autonomy and full equality.”

“All respect for the office of the presidency aside, I assumed that the obvious and unadulterated decline of freedom and constitutional sovereignty, not to mention the efforts to curb the power of judicial review, spoke for itself.”

“Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.”

“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.”