RBG Has Quietly Been Treated For Cancer

Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been treated for cancer for the fourth time

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was recently treated for cancer for a fourth time Image by Getty Images

By Jenny Singer August 23, 2019

Associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has undergone radiation treatment for a cancerous tumor located on her pancreas, a representative for the Supreme Court said on Friday.

The 86-year-old justice has previously survived colon, pancreatic and lung cancer. On August 5, she began three weeks of outpatient radiation treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. According to a report first published by NPR’s Nina Totenberg, doctors at Sloan Kettering said that “The tumor was treated definitively and there is no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body.”

“Justice Ginsburg will continue to have periodic blood tests and scans,” the court added. “No further treatment is needed at this time.” Though Ginsburg was forced to cancel her annual summer vacation in New Mexico, she managed to catch a showing of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof” in Manhattan during her treatment last week.

Just a month ago, Ginsburg spoke openly about public concerns about her health and wellbeing in a memorable interview with NPR, sharing an anecdote that illustrated the futility of other people’s comments on her health.

“There was a senator, I think it was after my pancreatic cancer, who announced with great glee that I was going to be dead within six months,” she told Totenberg. “That senator, whose name I have forgotten, is now himself dead, and I am very much alive.”

Jenny Singer is the deputy life/features editor for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny

Jenny Singer is a freelance writer with pieces in Vox, the Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Teen Vogue, and more. She was previously a staff writer at Glamour and the Forward, and she’s currently getting an MFA in nonfiction writing at the University of Iowa.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO