Ginsburg battling cancer again

U.S. justice says she’s still able to work ‘full steam’

U.S. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg announced Friday that she is being treated for a recurrence of cancer, this time on her liver, but says she remains able to do her work on the Supreme Court.

“I have often said I would remain a member of the court as long as I can do the job full steam,” Ginsburg said in a statement. “I remain fully able to do that.”

Ginsburg, 87, has battled cancer four times and has had other health concerns. She was in Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland earlier this week for an unrelated gall bladder infection.

In her statement, Ginsburg said she began chemotherapy in mid-may after doctors discovered lesions on her liver. A subsequent scan, on July 7, indicated “significant reduction” of the lesions and no new disease, she said.

“I am tolerating chemotherapy well and am encouraged by the success of my current treatment,” Ginsburg said. “I will continue bi-weekly chemotherapy to keep my cancer at bay, and am able to maintain an active daily routine. Throughout, I have kept up with opinion writing and all other court work.”

Ginsburg’s health has been a continuing source of concern during recent years. An inability to do the job would leave the court’s four liberals without its leader. It would also give President Donald Trump a chance to name a third member of the court, and cement its conservative majority for a generation.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell stopped President Barack Obama from making an election-year nomination to the Supreme Court in 2016, saying the next president should make the choice. But Mcconnell has said he would push through a Trump nominee this year should an opening occur. The difference, he said, was that in this election year, the same political party controls the White House and Senate.

At an appearance at the end of August, Ginsburg said that her work on the Supreme Court has “kept me going” through four bouts of cancer and that she was “on my way to being very well.”

The Supreme Court said Aug. 23 that Ginsburg had completed a three-week course of stereotactic ablative radiation therapy — a highly focused treatment that concentrates an intense dose of radiation on a tumour — after a malignancy was discovered on her pancreas.

It was the second treatment for cancer in nine months for Ginsburg. She had a portion of her left lung removed in December and in past decades was treated for colon and pancreatic cancer. She broke ribs in a fall in 2018, which resulted in the discovery of the lung cancer.