Victory: ACLU Cracks Under Pressure After Outrage Over Altered Ruth Bader Ginsburg Quote

(AP Photo/Stephan Savoia, File)

Last week, we reported on how the ACLU went full cringe in a tweet they posted where they altered a quote from the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg to eliminate all references to women.

Advertisement

To quickly recap, Republicans and even some Democrats ripped the organization to shreds for posting a revised quote from the former Supreme Court associate justice and feminist icon on the one year anniversary of her death, a quote that was specifically about an issue that directly relates to women (abortion).

As of this writing, the tweet is still up. Here’s how the ACLU changed a dead woman’s words to make them sound more gender-neutral, erasing women in the process:

This is the unaltered version of what she said during her 1993 confirmation hearings:

“The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her well-being and dignity. 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.”

Whether or not one believes abortion should be legal, those were her words. The bigger issue was that women were removed from her quote, which was ironic on so many levels.

As it turns out, the backlash against what they did was so strong that this week, in an interview with the New York Times, they walked it back — falling short of issuing an outright apology but noting they regretted the tweet and would not be doing anything like that again:

Advertisement

Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said Monday that he regretted that a tweet sent out recently by his organization altered the words of a well-known quote by the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

[…]

“We won’t be altering people’s quotes,” Mr. Romero said in an interview on Monday evening. “It was a mistake among the digital team. Changing quotes is not something we ever did.”

Mr. Romero first noted his regrets in an interview with Michelle Goldberg, The New York Times columnist, who wrote a column that spoke to the danger of trying to “change the nature of reality through language alone.”

Though he acknowledged his team’s mistake, Romero still demonstrated he and his organization reside in an alternative reality when he told the paper that his “colleagues do a fantastic job of trying to understand a reality that people who seek abortions are not only women. That reality exists.”

The actual reality of the matter is that transgender men were born women and thus have the necessary equipment to get pregnant and carry a baby to term, whether Romero, his comrades at the ACLU, and other like-minded individuals care to acknowledge it or not.

As I said last week, my thought process was that the ACLU accidentally did women a favor in a way by demonstrating – in one tweet – the absolute absurdity of removing references to women from a quote made by a leftist women’s rights icon about an issue that directly relates to women, and on the anniversary of her death at that. The symbolism just couldn’t be overlooked or downplayed, as even some “feminists” suggested in the comments and quote RTs.

Advertisement

This may seem like an inconsequential victory in the “gender identity” and “transgender rights” battles, but I assure you, it’s not. This walk back and the Lancet Medical Journal apologizing for referring to women as “bodies with vaginas” in their latest issue are strong signals that the tide is changing ever so slowly, and that we shouldn’t give up this fight.

Remember, these groups/institutions wouldn’t be doing anything like this, if the criticisms directed at them were only coming from one side (the conservative side). The “progressive” side is pushing back more aggressively on these issues now, too, to a certain extent, and that is a welcome development indeed.

Because even though there are many issues where conservatives and liberals don’t agree, on this one, it’s imperative that leftists wake up and see the dangerous folly of the movement to essentially eradicate women’s rights altogether in the name of “transgender equality” for what it is.

Flashback: L.A. Times Editorial Telling Women to Get Over Seeing Men’s Genitalia in Locker Rooms Is Something Else

Recommended

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on RedState Videos