The Megyn Kelly Show - Roe Overturned - Political, Legal, and Personal Implications, with Charles Cooke, Alan Dershowitz, Lila Rose, and Batya Ungar-Sargon

00:00:00.480 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations.

00:00:11.780 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We are back, back from

00:00:16.600 vacation with a big show for you today. We have packed our lineup full of important voices

00:00:22.100 to hear on all angles of the historic decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe versus

00:00:29.040 Wade, nearly 50 years in the making. And this morning, we just got another major ruling.

00:00:35.440 In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that a high school football coach who you met on this

00:00:41.200 program had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team's games.

00:00:48.160 You may remember that we interviewed Coach Joseph Kennedy on this show, so it's a case

00:00:52.480 we know well. We'll tackle what that means for the country, but it's definitely a victory

00:00:56.480 for religious liberty. The guy wasn't trying to make the students pray. He was just trying

00:01:02.200 to offer a prayer himself. And when the students wanted to come join him, he didn't tell them,

00:01:06.960 get out, get away. But that's how crazy our religious liberty jurisprudence has gotten,

00:01:11.740 that these sort of far-left people who misunderstand the Constitution believe that's unconstitutional.

00:01:17.280 This court set it straight today and ruled for the football coach who was fired over this,

00:01:22.540 who's fired over it. All right, so that's that. But we've got to begin with the seismic

00:01:27.980 ruling in Dobbs. Roe versus Wade is overturned, and so is the 1992 decision upholding it,

00:01:34.660 Casey versus Planned Parenthood. And that is a good thing. The decisions were an embarrassment.

00:01:42.260 They were a legal invention driven by ideological courts bent on finding constitutional rights

00:01:48.500 that did not exist. It was judicial activism, which misled the country for nearly 50 years

00:01:55.300 into believing that the court had powers it didn't and that women had constitutional rights

00:02:00.900 they didn't. That was wrong. To the extent women are feeling like the rug has been pulled out from

00:02:06.460 under them today, that is the fault of the Roe and the Casey courts, not of this court.

00:02:13.040 Abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution. The challenge all along has been to figure out,

00:02:18.480 whether it is nonetheless an implicit right, as the court has reluctantly from time to time

00:02:24.780 recognized implicit fundamental rights, even though they're not specifically spelled out in

00:02:30.100 the Constitution. That's happened. Roe found the abortion right was such a right rooted in an

00:02:36.280 alleged constitutional right to privacy, which also is not mentioned in the Constitution.

00:02:42.360 And then Casey, 20 years later, switched the rationale, presumably understanding that they

00:02:47.840 were on shaky ground when dealing with the right to privacy, saying abortion rights actually

00:02:52.740 derived from the 14th Amendment's due process clause, which provides that no person may be deprived of

00:02:58.640 life, liberty or property without due process of law. Now, for part of our country's history,

00:03:05.180 the due process clause was thought to simply be about process. It guaranteed that, for example,

00:03:10.920 the state could deprive someone of their liberty or even their life, but would have to afford them

00:03:16.640 due process first. Then the court started recognizing something known today as substantive

00:03:22.380 due process, which the late Justice Scalia and now Justice Thomas called a contradiction in terms.

00:03:29.220 If it's about process, it's about affording somebody process, not new substantive rights.

00:03:35.500 In any event, substantive due process liberty rights is where Casey in 1992 found the right to an

00:03:45.960 abortion. The majority in Dobbs, the case decided on Friday, held this reasoning was, quote, egregiously

00:03:52.300 wrong from the start. That, among other things, implicit constitutional rights must be deeply rooted in

00:03:58.300 our history and our tradition. That's a quote. And that abortion never was never. When the 14th Amendment

00:04:06.420 was adopted, three quarters of the states had outlawed abortion at any stage of pregnancy.

00:04:12.020 OK, three quarters. Even by the time that Roe was decided in 1973, 30 states still banned abortion

00:04:19.560 altogether. The notion that abortion was a right had not been recognized by any court, state or federal,

00:04:27.860 until just a few years before a row. So, no, this was not a right deeply rooted in our history and our

00:04:35.700 tradition. No matter to the courts in Roe and Casey, which decided they knew better. Just as the country

00:04:43.380 was beginning to evolve politically on the issue of abortion, the Roe and Casey courts stepped in and

00:04:50.400 short circuited the political process. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg later acknowledged that fact.

00:04:55.580 Worse yet, the Casey court, swimming in hubris, called on both sides to, quote, end their national

00:05:04.020 division by treating the court's decision as the final settlement. Really? Not surprisingly,

00:05:11.740 no one listened. And the debate has raged on for some 50 years since Roe. Even now, 26 states

00:05:19.100 petitioned this court to overturn Roe and Casey. Nothing has healed. No divisions have ended because

00:05:26.020 this is a matter for the people to decide, not nine unelected people in robes, but the citizenry

00:05:33.340 of the states. And now the matter goes back to where it ought to be, to the citizens of each and every

00:05:42.160 state. Are you angry about abortion rights being stripped away in your state? March, petition, vote,

00:05:50.000 exercise your rights to be heard and have your opinion taken seriously. And if you lose the fight,

00:05:56.100 you may have to consider other options like voting with your feet, just like we do when other policies

00:06:01.620 convince us that our state does not represent our values anymore. This is the way it ought to work.

00:06:06.620 The Supreme Court was never meant to be a kind of super legislature. It started looking more like one

00:06:13.160 when the liberal belief of a, quote, living constitution took root. This concept is all

00:06:20.160 over the dissent in Dobbs, which is emotional and distraught and reads very much like a policy

00:06:26.800 prescription you might hear from AOC. As Justice Scalia once observed, if the Supreme Court

00:06:32.980 was meant to see the rights in the Constitution as expanding based on the changing views of equality

00:06:40.840 or liberty or decency, then why did we need the 19th Amendment, which afforded women the right to

00:06:47.900 vote? Why didn't the high court just rule that the due process clause mandated this right?

00:06:53.940 Because jurists in this country used to agree that the Constitution governed a few key things

00:06:59.560 and the rest of our rights would be determined by the people. The people in 1920 felt that women's

00:07:06.420 suffrage was so important, it deserved better than a state by state evaluation. It deserved to be a part

00:07:11.820 of the Constitution. That is why they passed a constitutional amendment. And they could do the

00:07:17.200 same now on abortion if they could convince the country to support it, which, by the way, they can't.

00:07:24.220 But the support for it is not that wide. That's why it's going to remain a state by state issue.

00:07:31.180 That's how a federalist system works. Accountability among our state representatives who make policy

00:07:37.900 decisions every day and who answer to us at the ballot box. Not some sweeping grant of power to nine

00:07:45.260 judges to tell us what's decent in modern day America.

00:07:49.600 One last point. The dissent in Dobbs is not wrong that other decisions based on the alleged privacy

00:07:58.480 right mentioned in a row or substantive due process liberty cited by Casey do not necessarily pass the

00:08:07.480 test outlined by the majority. They're not wrong about that. Was contraception, homosexual sodomy,

00:08:15.740 gay marriage or interracial marriage, quote, deeply rooted in our country's history and tradition, the test to which

00:08:24.120 they subjected the abortion right? No. So are those rights going away as the dissent and some liberal

00:08:31.500 pundits now claim? Well, the majority explicitly and repeatedly says absolutely not. And that assurance is worth a

00:08:40.980 lot legally. You just wait to see when somebody tries to challenge one of those cases, that majority

00:08:46.700 language coming back to haunt them. They probably won't even accept those cases. But if they were to,

00:08:51.660 that language in the majority opinion will come back to haunt anybody trying to challenge the right

00:08:56.220 to contraception, etc. Nonetheless, the dissent and liberal pundits remain skeptical. In my view,

00:09:04.440 the majority should be believed for two reasons. One, as the court points out, abortion is in a class

00:09:10.800 of one. None of these other rights involved such a grave clash of interests and unborn child's right

00:09:18.540 to life against a mother's right to control her own body. And where cases can be easily distinguished

00:09:24.340 from one another, the tossing of one is far less likely to lead to the tossing of the other.

00:09:31.160 Second, each of these decisions is entitled to its

00:09:34.440 own stare decisis or respect as a precedent of the high court. The court in applying that

00:09:42.400 stare decisis test to Roe and Casey did not find them worthy of deference for a whole host of reasons.

00:09:49.880 But the majority points out that each of these other decisions on contraception, interracial marriage,

00:09:54.400 gay marriage and so on would get its own stare decisis analysis. And the factors that led to the

00:10:00.180 rejection of Roe and Casey, including how unworkable they proved to be, the line of viability, the three

00:10:07.040 trimester system that Roe imposed based on nothing and so on, how egregiously baseless they were from

00:10:12.760 the start and the extent to which the public has relied on them would lead to very different conclusions

00:10:18.420 in these other cases involving rights to contraception, interracial unions and gay marriage.

00:10:24.360 All right. So that's fear mongering by the people who just don't like today's decision.

00:10:29.860 In some, there is every reason to believe that these legal precedents will remain safe

00:10:34.040 as the court has all but guaranteed as much. And there is no legal will to overrule them,

00:10:40.980 save for basically Justice Thomas, who admits in his concurrence that he doesn't really believe in

00:10:46.060 substantive due process rights and would leave all of this to the legislatures.

00:10:50.180 Moreover, unlike abortion rights, there's nothing about these rights to suggest that they've been

00:10:55.480 unworkable or that they even remain genuinely controversial. Who's out there running around

00:11:00.560 opposing interracial marriage, right, or contraception? Even gay marriage has now got the majority

00:11:06.340 support in this country. Bottom line, Roe and Casey needed to go. As the majority found, they usurped

00:11:13.680 the power to address a question of profound moral and social importance that the Constitution

00:11:19.560 unequivocally leaves for the people. Now the fight will play out where it should,

00:11:25.940 in the political arena. And I have no doubt that both sides are well suited for the battle.

00:11:36.460 Joining me now, Charles C.W. Cook, senior writer at National Review. Charles, what do you make of it?

00:11:42.640 Well, I think that irrespective of one's view on abortion, full disclosure, I'm pro-life,

00:11:51.360 one should be pleased with this decision, because the law is the law. There are Supreme Court decisions

00:11:59.080 that I think are correct, that I wish weren't, and that I think are wrong, but cut against interest.

00:12:08.220 For example, I think a lot of the court's death penalty jurisprudence is just wrong,

00:12:13.140 even though I am personally strongly against the death penalty. And so it is here. Roe,

00:12:18.760 right from the beginning, was an exercise in judicial imperialism. There's nothing wrong with the court

00:12:25.380 interfering in democratic decisions when those decisions contradict the plain text or structure

00:12:32.080 or original public meaning of the constitution. But that was not the case on any count with Roe.

00:12:39.500 And worse than just being wrong, which in my view is in and of itself justification for nixing it,

00:12:45.800 it's corrupted our judicial politics, and it's corrupted the court itself. And it had proven over 49 years

00:12:54.940 that it was unworkable. And eventually, I'm glad that a majority said, you know what,

00:12:59.780 this was wrong the day it was decided, and we're just not doing it anymore.

00:13:03.680 It's funny to listen to some of the left talk about how extreme these justices are. They're

00:13:09.520 activists. They're extremist activists. When the truth is, that's what Roe and Casey was. That's

00:13:16.580 what those justices did. And the countries had to live with the fallout from their activism for five

00:13:23.720 decades. Now, finally, the court boots this back to where it ought to be in the hands of the people.

00:13:29.200 And they get saddled with that label and judged illegitimate by people like AOC and others.

00:13:37.900 Well, I think it's worth distinguishing Casey and Roe as well. And Roe was the original sin.

00:13:42.580 Roe was the extreme move. Roe was the activism. Roe was the lie. Casey was, in a sense, a cowardly

00:13:51.660 refusal to accept that. Casey didn't really say, oh, this was a good decision. Casey said,

00:13:57.640 in essence, this was a decision. This has a long tradition of existence to borrow from Animal House.

00:14:03.940 That was the Casey holding. And that didn't work either. So it's not as if Casey contained some

00:14:11.320 magisterial review of history and came to the opposite conclusion as the majority in Dobbs.

00:14:17.920 Casey said, well, we've done this. And I think that's an appalling way to look at the law,

00:14:22.280 especially constitutional law, to say, well, if if when a controversy arises, if the judges lie about

00:14:29.040 it, that has to stay American law forever. Of course, that's not how we should. We should do

00:14:35.280 this. So it's not really true that this has been upheld and upheld and upheld so much as there was

00:14:43.000 an initial mistake. And the court has never been willing to acknowledge it until now.

00:14:48.980 OK, so now we get to the politics of it, because my own take is. This is not great for Republicans

00:14:56.540 going into these midterm elections. They were winning the news cycle for that for them was very

00:15:03.300 good and for Joe Biden was very bad. And forget Roe, OK, because people I mean, Dobbs overturning Roe and

00:15:09.820 Casey, people are going to get over the Supreme Court and move on, I think, pretty quickly to

00:15:14.320 what's happening state by state. And that's what's really going to matter. You know, I mean,

00:15:18.460 I think it's 13 states already. Abortion is now illegal thanks to those sort of trigger laws that

00:15:24.100 were in place just in case Roe was ever overturned. And, you know, now we're going to see a media rush

00:15:29.560 to cover every woman who can't get an abortion in her state as though it's the only narrative out

00:15:35.320 there. Well, no, no coverage of like the women who wound up having their babies and are really

00:15:41.580 thankful that they didn't have abortions. Those will not be covered. And certainly that that's

00:15:46.000 not even going to be that many of those between now and the midterms. So politically, how does this

00:15:51.880 play out? Well, I think we have to separate out two elements here. The first one is while it is true

00:16:02.920 that the press is absolutely ruthlessly pro-choice. Most people respond to the world around them,

00:16:10.200 not what they see on the news, which is why, for example, attempts to cover up, say, high gas prices

00:16:16.260 or inflation just haven't worked. If you go to a store or if you fill up your car, you know what

00:16:22.140 the truth is. And I think that's true with abortion as well. I mean, anyone who didn't want an abortion

00:16:27.720 will be in the same position they were before. But those who do will find out what their state's

00:16:34.300 position is. I bring that up because this moves down the question in many ways from the national

00:16:40.480 level in that all of that energy is going to be absorbed locally. If you're in California, nothing's

00:16:47.120 going to change. If you're in Nebraska, it probably will. So then the question becomes, well, how many

00:16:54.900 people will care? And that also gets absorbed locally, not in every case. But most states, I think,

00:17:00.880 will set their laws about where the public is. We've seen already in Virginia, for example,

00:17:06.220 the governor said he wants to set the abortion restrictions at 15 weeks, which is about where

00:17:10.520 Virginians are. It's actually about where Americans are as well. So then the question becomes, well,

00:17:15.620 are people motivated enough to protest on behalf of other people, that is, people who live in

00:17:22.600 different states? Are Californians angry enough about potential laws in Alabama or Mississippi

00:17:28.860 to change the way they vote in November? I don't think there'll be a huge number of those people.

00:17:33.900 But I do think there will be some. And I do think that it will motivate some voters to get out if they

00:17:40.900 weren't going to before, or even to move from independent to Democrat, or maybe even in some cases,

00:17:46.380 Republican to Democrat. But I don't see that as a huge issue.

00:17:50.580 So I think at the margins, this will help the Democrats a little bit. But I think the fact that

00:17:55.900 it is going to be absorbed at the state level takes a lot of the sting out of that shift.

00:18:01.220 You've got people like Dave Portnoy out there saying, this is crazy. You know, there's no way

00:18:08.080 I would vote for Republicans in the wake of this. I guess we have the soundbite. Take a listen.

00:18:12.280 I just don't get it. To take away the ability to make informed decisions on how they want to live

00:18:18.660 their lives is bananas. And at what point do you look at the Constitution and say, hey, this was

00:18:25.540 written by people who had slaves. Maybe the woke left, the liberals, they're crazy. They're insane

00:18:30.780 people. Yet, I end up having to vote for a moron like Biden, because the right is going to put Supreme

00:18:38.000 Court people in, who are just ruining this country and taking basic rights away. I honestly believe

00:18:43.760 95% of the people in the country think like me. That's why we have to vote for the morons like

00:18:49.300 Biden, who's borderline incompetent, because it's too dangerous to vote Republican. Like,

00:18:55.100 what the fuck are we doing? Wake up.

00:18:57.820 Everybody thinks that the majority of the country thinks like they do. Everybody's like, I believe

00:19:03.740 90, 95, at least think exactly the way I do. But what do you make of his point? Not that Dave

00:19:09.920 Portnoy's, you know, political prognostications are, you know, must respond to events. But he may

00:19:16.580 speak for a wide swath of, in particular, young men and women of childbearing age who have to worry

00:19:22.360 about, you know, unwanted pregnancies who feel like they've lost something.

00:19:26.480 Well, I have to say, I watched that last week, was it? And it was one of the more moronic

00:19:35.420 contributions to the debate, in both historical constitutional and political terms. There will

00:19:42.880 be people who feel like that, hopefully, for slightly less self interested reasons than Dave

00:19:47.860 Portnoy's. But again, I think that that is why it's important to remember that the Supreme Court did

00:19:55.180 not say that abortion is legal in the United States. You know, this idea that I keep hearing

00:19:59.860 from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others, that this was somehow an arrogant act, that this was

00:20:06.760 activism, that this undermined democracy is completely backwards. It would have been an arrogant act if

00:20:13.320 there were a constitutional amendment to protect a right to abortion. But given that there wasn't,

00:20:19.540 it was the opposite of an arrogant act. It was the court saying, 50 years ago, we usurped this

00:20:24.880 power. We should not have that power. We are therefore sending it back to the people who enjoy that

00:20:32.460 power at the state level. So we will see this play out 50 times. This isn't a national question

00:20:39.720 anymore, at least not in the same way that it was. Are there enough people who think like Dave Portnoy

00:20:44.980 in states to chafe at the restrictions that will be in some states, but not all put in place?

00:20:51.820 Maybe. I would just filter that, though, through a couple of observations. First off, even when people

00:20:57.060 have particular views about abortion, they don't tend to rank that high on the list of priorities.

00:21:02.060 Maybe that will change. I'm really not convinced in this economy that it will. Second, the Roe regime,

00:21:09.480 as pushed through Casey, was far more extreme than where most people who are pro-choice are.

00:21:17.640 It led to an abortion norm of about 24 weeks, which you don't really see in many other places.

00:21:23.660 You certainly don't see in Europe. I think there's only six countries in the world

00:21:28.660 allow abortion after 20 weeks. So we're in a list of like North Korea and some other. We're not in a

00:21:36.040 good list. Right. So I can understand if people who think like Dave Portnoy might chafe at, say,

00:21:42.120 the abortion laws of Missouri. But I think it's unlikely they're going to be too vexed by the

00:21:47.080 abortion laws in Florida, where it's now 15 weeks, or Virginia, if they get their 15-week ban. And

00:21:52.660 that's the bit that gets missed, because the Roe debate has led us into this false dichotomy of

00:21:57.680 zero weeks, or 24, or in practice, more, where actually that's not where most legislatures are going

00:22:04.240 to end up. And it's not where most people are going to end up either. But politically,

00:22:08.140 how does it play out? You're in Florida. DeSantis is, you know, considered one of,

00:22:13.240 if not the favorite for the GOP nomination. We'll see what Trump does. And so, you know,

00:22:18.660 every debate is going to be, where do you stand on the abortion? 15 weeks. Why isn't it zero? Why

00:22:23.460 are you allowing it up to 15 weeks? This guy over here is to your right, DeSantis. Why aren't you more

00:22:27.860 pro-life, right? Like this is going to come to dominate a lot of the questions and so on. And

00:22:33.120 how do you think somebody like DeSantis handles that? Well, I do agree that it's tricky,

00:22:37.960 because if you're DeSantis and you want to be president, then you have to think, first off,

00:22:42.860 how do I get through a primary where one of my opponents says that Florida should have a zero

00:22:47.420 week regime? And then you think, how do I get through a general election where a rival on the

00:22:53.540 Democratic side might say that Florida should have a 24-week or 30-week or 40-week regime or that

00:22:58.180 Roe should be restored? But again, I think the question is where the average person is. Now,

00:23:02.540 this is not a moral point. Morally, I find it very difficult to say 15 weeks is fine. If you think

00:23:09.140 a life is a life as I do, then really you would want to see no abortions at all. But in practical

00:23:14.520 politics, you can't get there just by drawing moral inferences. You have to convince other people who

00:23:20.420 don't agree with you. You have to work bit by bit. That's been true on an awful lot of questions in

00:23:25.840 American history. And it's true here. And I don't see a particular risk to say Ron DeSantis or Glenn

00:23:33.060 Youngkin, for that matter, if he runs, saying, well, we set it at 15. That's where we thought

00:23:37.320 the people of my state were. Also, remember, by the time Ron DeSantis runs for president,

00:23:41.960 for the first time in 50 years, he will be able to say, this is no longer a federal question.

00:23:47.880 He will be able to say, this is not about judges anymore. This is not about Congress. This is not

00:23:54.740 about the president. This has been returned to the states. And he can say what he did in Florida

00:23:59.800 and then say that the issue of abortion is up to my predecessor and the governors in the other 49.

00:24:06.180 That's the smart answer, because you get dragged into, you know, it used to be easy for most GOP

00:24:12.360 candidates, even Trump, who, you know, I don't know, somebody said, one of the articles I read said

00:24:17.740 he has a complicated history with abortion. Even Trump could run as a pro-life candidate just saying,

00:24:24.600 I don't believe in Roe, you know, is wrong to decide. And we should I would appoint justices

00:24:28.780 who felt as I do. That's easy. It's it gets a lot trickier when you start to get into, well,

00:24:35.020 entirely outlawed. What about, you know, the left keeps saying, you know, that they're going to get

00:24:39.440 rid of any exception, even for the life of the mother. Meanwhile, that's not true. None of the states

00:24:45.420 that have actually even kicked in on their abortion bans would disallow it if it were necessary to save the

00:24:50.800 life of the mother. Now, rape and incest exceptions. That's a different story. And I do think the media

00:24:56.120 constantly playing up those cases. You've got a young girl. She was the victim of rape. She can't

00:25:02.460 get, you know, incest. You know, she can't get an abortion. That's I've been part of the media long

00:25:09.000 enough to know that's where they will go. And you talk about those suburban Republican women who drifted

00:25:15.240 away from Trump. You know, I'm not saying that there aren't there's not a huge pro-life contingent

00:25:21.180 there. I think some of them are pro-life, but those cases tug at the heartstrings. And just just

00:25:26.520 anecdotally, Charles, I'm thinking about one of my friends in Texas. Texas is not exactly a blue state

00:25:30.480 and she's very red voter, but she's got four daughters and she didn't like what Texas did on

00:25:35.920 the six week thing. And this is the kind of thing that can move more moderate Republican women.

00:25:42.700 I think that's right. And I think that's why pro-lifers ought to recognize that even small

00:25:51.400 changes will be an improvement. And that if they try and move too fast on legislation and on changing

00:25:58.800 the culture, then they may end up losing power at the state level and seeing worse outcomes than the

00:26:04.480 ones that they wanted. I can't find a good reason as somebody who believes that life begins at

00:26:11.120 conception to exclude, say, rape and incest. I can absolutely see a case for the life of the mother.

00:26:18.660 We're just talking philosophically. A child is a child, however it's conceived. But it will be the

00:26:24.060 first thing I did if I were in any position of power is to exempt that because that is something

00:26:29.700 that people feel extremely strongly about and for good reason. Again, I can't really see a case for 15

00:26:36.980 weeks or 12 weeks. If you think it's a life, then with the exception of the life of the mother,

00:26:41.480 it's a life. But you're just not going to get zero weeks. And if you try, you're not going to bring

00:26:46.140 people along with you and you're going to end up alienating too many voters and you're going to end

00:26:50.820 up with a regime that is much worse than the one that you wanted. So if I were in, again, if I were in a

00:26:56.360 position of authority, I'm not. I would say, look, we now have the chance to make progress on this.

00:27:01.840 Let's not bite off too much of the loaf. Because, you know, this is the whole point of the anti-Roe

00:27:08.120 movement is that there is no constitutional right that overcomes the will of the people.

00:27:12.200 And therefore, we have to take into account the will of the people. And lots and lots and lots of

00:27:17.020 people profoundly and earnestly disagree with the pro-life side. And they get a voice in this too.

00:27:25.300 On that front of a life is a life. And, you know, I mean, obviously the entire pro-choice

00:27:29.940 movement is about that, right, that life begins at conception and that while there may be some

00:27:35.120 empathy for what a mother goes through carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term, that doesn't justify

00:27:41.720 the snuffing out of that life. You've got some other rationales out there that are worthy of a

00:27:47.460 moment. Hannah Navarro on The View goes out there. And this is her justification for why abortion

00:27:55.580 needs to remain a right. Sorry, Debbie, what'd you say? Do we have it? I'm talking to my producer.

00:28:02.100 We're going to get it for one second. But goes out there and talks about why it's so important that

00:28:06.980 abortion remain a right available to all women. And this is how she explained the need. Charles, listen.

00:28:12.560 I have not anybody to tell you what you need to do with your life or with your uterus.

00:28:19.320 And because I have a family with a lot of special needs kids. I have a brother who's 57 and has the

00:28:25.940 mental and motor skills of a one-year-old. And I know what that means financially, emotionally,

00:28:32.020 physically for a family. And I know not all families can do it. And I have a step-granddaughter

00:28:37.320 who was born with Down syndrome. And you know what? It is very difficult in Florida to get services.

00:28:43.520 It is not as easy as it sounds on paper. And I've got another, another step-grandson who is very

00:28:51.460 autistic, who has autism. And it is incredible. And their mothers and people who are in that society

00:28:58.400 or in that community will tell you that they've considered suicide because that's how difficult

00:29:03.580 it is to get help. Because that's how lonely they feel. Because they can't get other jobs.

00:29:09.100 Because they have financial issues. Because the care that they're able to give their other children

00:29:13.700 suffers. Wow. She's on CNN there, not on The View. Obviously, she's a contributor there.

00:29:21.100 So it's really hard to raise autistic children. And therefore, abortion needs to remain legal on demand.

00:29:29.780 And there's no other way to interpret what she just said, other than that she thinks those people

00:29:38.180 should be dead. I'm afraid I find that grotesque. My mother's a special needs teacher. I grew up

00:29:44.700 helping her out at work. She taught children with cerebral palsy, with Down syndrome, all across the

00:29:52.580 autistic spectrum, Asperger's. And actually, that's one of the reasons I'm pro-life. I'm not religious,

00:29:58.100 you know, is because I think that there is a tendency, sometimes implicit, sometimes in the

00:30:04.900 case of a country such as Iceland, where they talk about having cured Down syndrome, by which they mean

00:30:10.260 having killed everyone who has Down syndrome, explicit to suggest that we need to abort people

00:30:17.220 who are different. And I think this goes to the political question as well,

00:30:22.980 in that I think it would be a good idea and the right thing to do for Republican-run states to make

00:30:29.540 clear that they are going to help support women who get pregnant and don't want the child.

00:30:36.820 Yes.

00:30:37.060 I think that that would be a good public policy. But I would just say this because I hear this a

00:30:42.660 little bit too much. One does not have to support that in order to oppose abortion any more than one

00:30:48.700 has to support, say, the building of new homeless shelters to oppose the killing of the homeless.

00:30:54.700 The core presumption here is that unborn children are alive and that they are worthy of our protection.

00:31:02.060 So while I do support all sorts of programs to help children and to help the mothers who are

00:31:09.740 struggling to care for them, it is not the case that in order to be meaningfully or properly pro-life,

00:31:15.980 one has to sign up with a given welfare agenda or the Democratic Party platform or whatever.

00:31:22.220 The case here is that life is precious and it's worthy of protection. And I wince when I hear what

00:31:28.940 Ana Navarro said there, because I hear her implying that the people to whom she's referring are somehow

00:31:34.380 second-class citizens. And I just do not see them like that.

00:31:37.260 Mm-hmm. It's absolutely disgusting. I too have it. I have a nephew who's

00:31:42.060 significantly autistic and he's amazing. And it has been challenging for his

00:31:45.900 parents, but they put the work in to try to help him with the issues that he's struggled with.

00:31:50.540 And he's awesome. And the suggestion that a better alternative would have been to abort

00:31:56.460 him because their life would have been easier suggests she has absolutely no understanding of

00:32:03.100 love and how it works and the gift of a child, challenged or not.

00:32:07.900 Charles, such a pleasure to talk to you. I really look forward to it all weekend because

00:32:11.420 I knew you're coming on and you didn't disappoint. Thank you.

00:32:14.060 All right. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

00:32:17.100 Coming back with Alan Dershowitz. Looking forward to him too. He and I are going to get into it.

00:32:22.140 It's going to be fun.

00:32:30.140 California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a Democrat, has a message for people upset

00:32:35.340 with the high court's decision in Dobbs. Just ignore it. Take a listen.

00:32:39.580 Women are going to control their bodies no matter how they try and stop us. The hell with the Supreme

00:32:47.660 Court. We will defy them. Women will be in control of their bodies. And if they think black women are

00:32:55.020 intimidated or afraid, they got another thought coming.

00:32:58.780 OK, so we got to get the race injected there, too. Joining me now, Alan Dershowitz,

00:33:04.300 Professor Emeritus of Harvard Law School and a constitutional scholar. OK, Professor, so just

00:33:10.780 ignore it. Is that an option? Of course not. We live in a rule of law society. We have to obey

00:33:17.340 the law whether we agree with it or not. Look, I disagree with the Supreme Court having even decided

00:33:22.220 this case. This is a self-inflicted wound. The Supreme Court need not have decided whether Roe

00:33:29.180 versus Wade is unconstitutional. As Justice Roberts put it so correctly, the only issue presented in

00:33:35.260 this case, the issue presented on the cert petition was, is a 15-week limitation as done in the Mississippi

00:33:42.780 statute constitutional? The state of Mississippi said you don't have to decide Roe versus Wade in

00:33:47.900 the cert petition. And the Supreme Court reached out in a case of incredible judicial activism and

00:33:54.940 decided a case not before them. Now, you and I have different views on liberalism, conservatism,

00:34:00.060 but all good conservatives I know believe in judicial restraint and oppose judicial activism,

00:34:06.220 except when it benefits them. How can well. But to be clear, but to be clear, Mississippi

00:34:11.980 sung a different tune once that once the court granted certiorari and once it got before the court

00:34:17.420 started saying you do have to overrule Roe one way or the other, you've got to do it. And Justice

00:34:21.100 Robert, Chief Justice Robert said, the court now rewards that tactic. He acknowledged that they

00:34:25.420 did a bait and switch and said, now you've rewarded that tactic.

00:34:28.460 He called it a gambit. He was absolutely right. The Supreme Court should have just limited itself to

00:34:35.260 that case. What the Supreme Court basically did is said, look, we've decided this case,

00:34:40.380 we've decided the Mississippi case, now we're going to send you an opinion that we think you ought to

00:34:44.940 follow. We also think that all these state statutes are questionable and that there's no need any

00:34:52.860 longer for any state to recognize any constitutional right. That's pure dictum, pure judicial overreaching.

00:34:59.980 Now, you know, they could have decided that two years or three years from now, but you don't decide

00:35:05.020 that case now on a record that doesn't require you to decide it. That's judicial activism and it's just

00:35:12.060 wrong. And I don't agree with that. I can understand Alito's point, which was these cases are coming.

00:35:18.220 There's like several in the pipeline. We could punch from the Mississippi case, but the issue is coming

00:35:22.700 our way. And by the time the both parties got in front of this court, they were both saying,

00:35:26.460 you've got two choices, overrule Roe and Casey or uphold Roe and Casey. That's what's actually before

00:35:32.060 you. And they they took the big swing. If they didn't take it this time, they were going to take it very

00:35:36.000 soon. In any event, that's that's sort of. But that's but that's not even the main issue when they

00:35:40.280 decided it, when when they they were eventually going to get to this. And there's the majority

00:35:44.780 at this point thinking Roe and Casey needed to go right that they needed to go. And now you've got

00:35:50.000 people saying it's so much worse than that. You got the dissent saying this. You got liberal

00:35:55.160 pundits saying this, saying you like Roe too bad. You like gay marriage too bad. You like interracial

00:36:02.180 marriage too bad. You like contraception too bad. They're all going to go. This is the beginning

00:36:05.980 of a very slippery slope. Is that true in your view? No, it's not, because there's a big difference

00:36:11.560 between what I call crimes, rights with victims and victimless rights. Now, I invented this concept.

00:36:17.320 It hasn't been part of the law, but there are two kinds of rights, victim rights and victimless rights.

00:36:24.580 Abortion is a victim right. As your previous guest said, a fetus is not an appendix. A fetus is not a

00:36:33.060 gallbladder. It's not just removing a useless organ. It's a potential life. And so we have to

00:36:40.420 balance that life against both the life of the mother and the interests of the mother. It's a

00:36:46.740 very difficult decision, but it's a decision that involves a conflict of rights. Gay rights, there's

00:36:51.780 no conflict. Contraception, there's no conflict. Interracial rights, there's no conflict. It's

00:36:58.120 nobody's business who you marry. It's nobody's business who you have sex with. It's nobody's

00:37:03.480 business whether you prevent somebody from being born. Nobody has the right to be born.

00:37:08.420 So I would distinguish, and I hope the court will distinguish, between rights with victims,

00:37:13.140 like abortion rights, and rights without victims, like the three other privacy rights we've discussed.

00:37:18.480 I think that's a very important distinction. Let me ask you about that.

00:37:21.840 In its majority opinion. So this is, I really been wanting to ask you this question because

00:37:26.380 I agree with you that the court does, they don't say it like you just said it, but they definitely

00:37:30.620 say those rights are not going to be touched. Those decisions are not going to be touched.

00:37:34.320 They're not at issue here. Abortion, as I said in the opening, is sort of in a class of one

00:37:38.460 for the reason you just stated. But I have to say the dissent's point, right? The dissent was the

00:37:46.280 three liberal jurists, Justice Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. The dissent's point that the court kind

00:37:52.080 of ignores the privacy, the right to privacy, and the privacy jurisprudence that led to Roe,

00:37:58.640 that I thought was a fair point. The majority doesn't acknowledge that there was a series of

00:38:03.940 decisions before Roe that Roe was based on. And the majority doesn't really grapple with the fact

00:38:10.720 that none of those decisions, like a decision on contraception, on interracial marriage, on gay marriage,

00:38:16.280 those are not going to meet the test of, is this a right firmly established in our traditions and

00:38:22.460 our history either, right? There's no history of interracial marriage that could just—so

00:38:28.040 their point, the dissent's point is, if you subject these other cases to the test that the majority

00:38:33.680 just subjected Roe and Casey to, they, in a just world, will fall too. So they say the majority,

00:38:39.760 they may say one thing, but when those cases actually get here, they're going to have to decide

00:38:43.700 another way if they really mean what they said here.

00:38:46.660 I agree with you, except I would put it a little differently. What the Supreme Court is saying is

00:38:50.620 logic be damned, rationale be damned. We're telling you, Ipsy Dixit, we're just telling you we're doing

00:38:55.920 the abortion case. We don't care how logically it requires us also to undo the conception cases and

00:39:02.520 undo the interracial marriage cases. We don't care about logic. We're in charge. We are the Supreme

00:39:09.880 Court. We're telling you this case is abortion only. It's pure, pure diktat. It has no logic at all.

00:39:19.200 Justice Thomas gets the best of the logic. If you take away the right of privacy, if you say that's

00:39:24.960 an unenumerated right and that we're not going to recognize that, how do you uphold the right of a

00:39:32.280 married couple? I lived in New Haven in the early 1960s, young married couple. I was not allowed to get

00:39:39.140 birth control before Griswold versus Connecticut because the Catholic Church demanded that all

00:39:45.180 birth control clinics be closed, and they closed all birth control clinics. And so in Griswold,

00:39:50.740 the Supreme Court said privacy. Remember, of course, the word privacy is not in the Constitution.

00:39:55.500 There was no such word in 1793. The word was security. The right of the people to be secure in

00:40:02.840 their persons is a right of privacy. And so I do think that the majority opinion is illogical,

00:40:11.800 that Thomas gets the best of the logical argument. But Americans aren't prepared to undo

00:40:16.740 their right to have birth control. They're not prepared to undo the right of a black man to marry

00:40:22.440 a black woman. It's all political. It has nothing to do with logic. So let's let's spend a minute on

00:40:27.700 Justice Thomas because he does. I totally agree with what you said. He's against this substantive

00:40:31.880 due process thing. He basically says, you know, if you want that, if you want these rights, go

00:40:36.440 petition your state legislature for them. It's not a constitutional matter. So people say, oh,

00:40:40.360 like he wants his marriage to Ginny Thomas to be undone. She's a white woman. No, it's not that he

00:40:45.520 would just he'd probably be out there petitioning his state to make sure the interracial marriage stayed

00:40:49.160 legal as a state by state matter. But none of those rights is under a push to be undone. You know,

00:40:54.660 like nobody's trying to undo contraception in 2022 or interracial marriage.

00:41:00.880 Interracial marriage won't be under a push, but gay marriage will be. I don't think that

00:41:05.940 I don't think the polls show the American people that got behind that.

00:41:10.580 Say it again. The polls show that the American people now now favor gay marriage. They weren't

00:41:14.840 there necessarily when when Obergefell came down, but they're there now.

00:41:18.520 What they don't favor is abortion at the very end of the pregnancy. I don't favor that either.

00:41:24.320 And but all I mean, about 70 percent, 65 percent of Americans want there to be some right of

00:41:31.860 abortion. They don't favor either extreme. They don't favor stopping abortion in the first couple

00:41:36.820 of weeks. They don't favor banning the morning after bill. And they also don't favor allowing

00:41:41.200 abortion at eight and a half months. So Americans are in the middle. And if the Supreme Court hadn't

00:41:47.080 decided this case now, maybe those impacts could have been felt. Even Senator Rubio said,

00:41:53.180 I can live with 15 weeks. The only people that couldn't live with 15 weeks are people on both

00:41:58.760 sides of the extreme. Fifteen weeks would have been a good compromise. The Supreme Court could

00:42:03.240 have done that and denied cert for the next five or six or eight years. But this was an agenda driven

00:42:08.580 decision. You know, this decision could have been written the day that Barrett got nominated.

00:42:13.260 Why did they have to wait for a case? They should have just announced we now have five justices to

00:42:17.740 overrule Roe versus Wade. We're hereby overrule Roe versus Wade. It doesn't matter. There's no case

00:42:22.720 before us. I don't see that as being so different. Well, you're not wrong that the conservatives have

00:42:26.900 been itching to undo this jurisprudence since it was passed. They thought it was absolutely baseless.

00:42:31.340 I mean, I don't think they're wrong about that. I know we disagree, but that doesn't mean you're

00:42:34.860 pro-abortion or anti-abortion. It means you think Roe and Casey were wrongly decided. But the thing about

00:42:39.800 Thomas is, so he's ideologically consistent. He said the same stuff all along. He said the same stuff here.

00:42:46.020 He's part of the five, four, but he also wrote a six, three, but he also wrote a separate

00:42:50.760 concurrence saying this is what how I would have decided it. And that has led to a lot of people

00:42:54.720 saying, you see, you see, even though the other majority justices are like, we don't agree with

00:42:59.880 him. We're not going to do that. But listen, Alan, to Lori Lightfoot, a Chicago mayor. OK, this is a city

00:43:06.580 that has had 282 homicides this year alone. OK, this past weekend, weekend, at least five people

00:43:16.580 were killed, including a five month old baby girl. All right. And she is railing not about that,

00:43:22.880 not about the homicides and the death rate, but about Clarence Thomas. Listen to her.

00:43:27.220 If you read Clarence Thomas' concurrence, he said, thank you. Fuck Clarence Thomas.

00:43:34.300 Fuck you, Clarence Thomas. He thinks we are going to stand idly by when they take our rights.

00:43:44.500 This is the same person who said that when she saw the draft opinion that this was a call to arms

00:43:49.940 against the justices. And we have to apply the same rules to the right and the left. And we have to

00:43:56.140 apply the same insurrection nonsense that we've applied to the right, to the left. But listen

00:44:01.660 to my former colleague, Larry Tribe. He says this is the first time in American history that people

00:44:07.720 went to sleep at night with one right and woke up the next morning with their rights gone. He is so

00:44:13.680 wrong. Karamatsu, the case that confined 100,000 Japanese Americans, took away a right. Buck versus

00:44:21.060 Bell, took away the right of mentally ill not to be sterilized. The Alien Sedition Acts took away the

00:44:27.980 right to dissent. We've gone through a history of having rights taken away. As Martin Luther King

00:44:33.340 said, you know, the arc of justice moves both ways. In the end, maybe it points to justice. But, you know,

00:44:39.900 you win some, you lose some if you're a liberal. But you don't take to the violence. You don't engage

00:44:44.940 in acts of civil disobedience. This too will pass. We will do everything we can to help women get

00:44:51.160 abortions. Wealthy people will put billions of dollars into helping them be transported to

00:44:56.740 California or New York or other places. And we have to fight back at the polls. This can help the

00:45:02.340 Democrats win the midterm elections. But this is not the end of the world. This is not the end of

00:45:07.620 civilized government. This is not the beginning of fascism. People on both sides have overstated the

00:45:14.280 importance of this decision. It's important. It's key. And it's very important to poor women and poor

00:45:20.360 women who have no access to abortion. But it didn't ban abortions. It sent them back to the states. Now,

00:45:28.160 we who support a woman's right to choose at various times of the pregnancy have to fight back politically

00:45:33.740 and have to win legislative seats and have to turn this around to our advantage. That's what Justice

00:45:39.380 Ginsburg said. And back in the day when Roe was decided. And she had a point then. And that point

00:45:48.000 is even more important now. Look, three legacies have been decided by this case. Robert's legacy,

00:45:53.320 he's lost control of his court. Ginsburg's legacy, she's been very much appropriately criticized

00:45:59.100 for not leaving the court in time to have her replaced by a more liberal person. And President

00:46:05.500 Trump's legacy, which has been enhanced, at least on the right, by his appointment in this decision.

00:46:11.060 So this is an important decision politically, as well as in the history of the Supreme Court.

00:46:15.580 But I don't think it was a necessary decision to decide at this point in time. It would have been

00:46:19.220 so much better if they decided 15 weeks. There'd be demonstrations by extremists on both sides who

00:46:24.400 aren't satisfied with 15 weeks and thinks 15 weeks too much, too little. But give us time.

00:46:29.480 Then a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, then you can overrule Roe versus Wade.

00:46:34.040 It was unnecessary to do it now. Alan Dershowitz, always love hearing your perspective.

00:46:39.280 Thanks so much for being here. Thank you so much. All right. We've got so much more

00:46:43.200 on the decision to overturn Roe and Casey and the media meltdown in the wake of Friday's decision

00:46:48.960 coming up right after this. Deputy Opinion Editor of Newsweek and author of Bad News,

00:46:59.020 How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy. Bhatia Anghar Sargon is with us now to respond to the

00:47:05.480 media's flailing reactions over the weekend and to explain why the polarization over Roe versus Wade

00:47:10.760 is the divide of the elite, like so many of the narratives that drive our media cycle.

00:47:18.180 Welcome back, Bhatia. Great to have you.

00:47:20.620 Thank you so much for having me. That conversation you just had with Alan Dershowitz was incredible

00:47:25.860 and just like an absolute encapsulation of what our media should be like and really isn't like.

00:47:30.960 So kudos to really exposing your audience to people you disagree with. It was just such a fabulous

00:47:35.980 conversation. Oh, thank you. I love him. And honestly, we're trying to get some of the people

00:47:40.380 who are very upset over this, like women who are very upset over this to come on the show. I mean,

00:47:45.180 one of my very good friends is a doctor, an OBGYN, an OBGYN who performs abortions.

00:47:52.360 She's too distraught to talk like she she is distraught. Another one of my lifelong friends

00:47:56.920 was a nurse at Planned Parenthood who assisted. So like it's not like I have people in my personal

00:48:01.080 life with whom I speak, but a lot of people don't want to come on and they think that maybe

00:48:05.180 our audience is more right leaning. But there are right leaning people who are pro-choice and there

00:48:09.560 are left leaning people who are pro-life. That's my mom. My mom's a lifelong Democrat who's

00:48:14.600 pro-life or she's a Catholic. Anyway, you just got to expose yourself to the different points of

00:48:19.040 view. Right. And then you're smart enough to make up your own mind. That's something I always

00:48:21.860 trust my audience to do. But the media is not to be trusted with these discussions because

00:48:26.600 they're driven by their own ideology and they don't trust their audience to make up their own

00:48:31.280 mind if exposed to all the different points of view. And that has been reflected in what we've

00:48:35.700 seen so far. I teased it before we did the segment. Here's just one example. This woman is

00:48:40.440 apparently a CNN legal analyst named Jennifer Rogers. Here's her take on it. This is SOT13.

00:48:47.100 Listen, it's a heartbreaking betrayal of half of the country. Sorry, I'm getting,

00:48:50.820 you know, watching the women there. It's emotional. It's a real problem. And people are talking about

00:48:56.620 privacy issues. You know, can can states who are trying to criminalize abortion, not just of the

00:49:02.760 women getting them, but of doctors providing them, of people driving them to the clinic,

00:49:06.020 are they going to be able to search your apps? You know, there's apps that track menstrual cycles.

00:49:12.320 You know, how far are these states going to try to go in criminalizing every single aspect of women

00:49:18.560 trying to control their reproductive rights? So Jennifer is apparently insane in addition to being

00:49:25.000 distraught. Literally nobody who knows anything about how this is going to work would suggest that

00:49:31.680 they're going to punish you for a period tracking app. Yeah, I was wondering, was she trying to make

00:49:38.180 an argument about privacy there, about big tech surveillance, the government tapping into that?

00:49:42.900 It didn't really make a lot of sense. You know, I have felt myself sort of having, I think, a similar

00:49:47.920 reaction to you seeing the level of hysteria and emotion around this. But at the same time, I also find

00:49:53.000 myself sort of feeling like, you know, every day we as Americans have the opportunity to choose to be

00:49:59.160 like a little bit more kind, you know, even in these moments when like life and death is at stake and,

00:50:04.960 you know, on both sides, I think, see it that way. And so I'm trying very hard to sort of get into the

00:50:09.640 mindset where you would start to really cry over this. And, you know, it's so interesting, Megan,

00:50:13.440 I don't know if you've noticed this, but when you look at who goes to these abortion protests,

00:50:18.160 you know, it's often people who just, they don't seem like they're the kind of people who would ever

00:50:22.900 really need one. You have people holding up signs being like, you know, this endangers black women,

00:50:27.880 but, you know, most of the women at these protests are often white women. They look, you know, like

00:50:32.040 from a certain, you know, demographic. Yeah, it's all Upper West Side, Lululemon wearing liberals.

00:50:38.700 Yeah, I think that that's a, yeah, it's a really interesting piece of this puzzle about,

00:50:43.020 you know, trying to understand and get to the bottom of where these emotions are coming from.

00:50:47.000 Well, you know, I have to say, as somebody who does have a lot of friends who are not just

00:50:52.060 pro-choice, but like in the business of providing abortions, I feel for them and I understand what

00:51:00.620 they're going through right now. And that's why I began the show by saying they have been misled.

00:51:05.740 They've been misled by the Roe court and the Casey court, and they should feel angry at them,

00:51:12.000 you know, and most of my honest friends, especially the smart ones like the doctors,

00:51:17.000 they get that Roe was hanging by a thread called stare decisis. You know, it was hanging by a

00:51:23.720 threat that required subsequent courts to just be deferential to Roe as a precedent. And this court

00:51:30.820 absolutely demolished the stare decisis analysis, basically saying, look, what you're entitled to

00:51:35.360 is the analysis about whether you deserve that sort of respect. And if you do, we got to give it to

00:51:41.480 you. And if you don't, then we don't. And all the factors, the five factor test of stare decisis do

00:51:46.940 not bode in favor of honoring Roe and Casey as viable precedents. So I just think that I understand

00:51:53.800 the outrage because we have been misled that this is a constitutional right for nearly 50 years.

00:51:58.680 But an honest analyst will go back and look at even what Lawrence Tribe said. Alan mentioned him. He's a

00:52:06.160 leftist professor at Harvard who who has been very critical of Roe from the beginning, saying,

00:52:11.360 you know, I like it, but it's not a very good legal decision. Right. Like, that's the truth.

00:52:16.900 We're just getting honest about what they did back then.

00:52:20.300 Yeah, I mean, to me, when I look at something like this, I ask myself,

00:52:23.660 does this make for more democracy or for less democracy? And it seems very clear that it makes

00:52:29.040 for more democracy. Right. That there was something, you know, really slightly more so

00:52:34.860 wherever you stand on that, that was not reflective of where the nation was at at the time that

00:52:41.120 became law. And I think that, you know, a lot of the rage, I agree with you about the being misled.

00:52:48.580 I think a lot of people on the left were under the impression that they had a kind of permanent

00:52:53.120 majority and they were no longer going to have to deal with the fact that half of the nation did

00:52:57.620 not agree with them on some major issues. And I think President Trump really overturned that.

00:53:02.360 He was sort of like the return of the repressed. Right. Like, you know, this, you know, huge populist

00:53:06.560 energy of people who said, you know, you've silenced us for too long. And this is sort of, you know,

00:53:10.680 the unraveling of that through the legal system. And I but I don't see how you could say that there's

00:53:16.260 something undemocratic about saying the people should be making these decisions, you know, for themselves.

00:53:21.500 You are so right. Adam Seward, staff writer for The Atlantic. The headline was the Constitution is

00:53:28.100 whatever the right wing says it is. And he writes, the Supreme Court has become an institution whose

00:53:33.620 primary role is to force a right wing vision of American society on the rest of the country. Now,

00:53:40.640 I don't agree with that at all, but I've kind of laughed because I was like, oh, is it upsetting

00:53:46.320 when an important institution is controlled by someone you disagree with politically?

00:53:52.920 Welcome to every day of a non leftist's life in America.

00:53:58.400 Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of projection going on, I think, in terms of, you know, them saying this is

00:54:03.240 fascism, this is dictatorship, when actually what's being said is this is going to go back to the most

00:54:07.760 local of local governments and people are going to be able to decide for themselves. And, you know,

00:54:11.800 honestly, I think that that's going to be that the thing that saves us from going too far to the

00:54:16.740 right. You know, I mean, it's very hard to imagine that these legislatures will be able to do things

00:54:21.940 like ban contraceptives and not be voted out very, very quickly. It's not going to happen. I agree

00:54:27.040 with that. That's not that's a scare tactic by people who don't like this decision. There's no

00:54:31.080 political will to do that. And even if there were even if the state did it and you tried to bring it up

00:54:36.180 to the Supreme Court, if the state did it, then somebody would challenge it and say the state

00:54:40.600 ban contraception. And the Supreme Court would take that and they would strike down that ban in

00:54:45.600 a second because they'd say we made very clear. See, the five times we said in the majority opinion

00:54:50.800 of Dobbs that contraception is not in danger. And that would be that or like that would be that.

00:54:55.480 So that really is a scare tactic. I've taken a very honest look at it because, you know, I I want

00:55:00.620 to be right legally and I want to be right more than I want to be loved. And I really think that's a

00:55:06.020 scare tactic by the left. Now, of course, I mean, I don't know how far left I should go in my

00:55:11.860 analysis soundbites, but you got this guy, Ellie Mistel of the nation, and he's, I think, an MSNBC

00:55:19.940 contributor. This is his take on what what the takeaway is in the wake of the Dobbs decision.

00:55:25.580 Well, the way that that it lines up with everything that the court is doing is that their their view of

00:55:32.680 the country, the conservative view of the country is that if dead white men didn't say it in the 18th

00:55:40.200 century, it doesn't exist. And we know that to be an intellectually bankrupt point because the same

00:55:46.420 people who say that ignore the Ninth Amendment, where those dead white men said we can't possibly

00:55:51.860 say all the rights that exist. So it's a it's a it's a full on broadside attack on liberal democracy.

00:55:59.080 OK, all that matters, you know, he was is whether you're a cisgendered male, basically. Did a white

00:56:06.300 man say it in the 18th century? He went on to say you basically need to be a cisgendered male

00:56:09.700 or a gun, he said, for your opinion to matter in America. I think that there is a lot of,

00:56:16.620 you know, like we were talking about before, wishful thinking. I mean, they they they were living

00:56:20.720 under a Supreme Court that had imposed a leftist liberal view on the nation at a time when the

00:56:28.740 nation at that time was not there. And now the nation is not there. And when that was taken away,

00:56:35.180 they suddenly start crying foul and saying, you know, oh, this is not democratic. This is, you know,

00:56:39.800 there's no democracy here. Right. And I think that that that thing where you you look, we live in a

00:56:46.080 nation of people who have different points of view. And we have to respect those. That is literally the

00:56:51.360 definition of democracy. That is what our nation is built on. That's where all of our rights and

00:56:55.840 protections come from. I will just point out, though, the divide on abortion is a lot smaller

00:57:02.480 than people say that it is. So, you know, it looks like something that is totally polarizing. Right.

00:57:07.980 Forty nine percent of Americans say they're pro-choice. Forty nine percent say they're pro-life.

00:57:11.360 But when you drill down into the details, there's just so much consensus. So, you know, 87 percent of

00:57:19.180 Americans believe if the mother's life in danger and abortion should be legal. Eighty four percent

00:57:23.480 believe that in cases of rape and incest, it should be legal, including 70 percent of Republicans believe

00:57:28.200 in rape and incest exceptions. Only 34 percent of Americans think it should be legal after the first

00:57:35.400 trimester. So that's the Mississippi law. Right. Twelve to fifteen weeks. That's where the European law.

00:57:40.840 Sixty percent of Americans are at. Yeah. And the European law. That's where the Europeans are,

00:57:45.320 too. For after first trimester. And only 19 percent of Americans think it should be legal

00:57:50.660 in the third trimester. And the thing that I find so frustrating about this, though, is that

00:57:54.340 when you look at where the political parties are, instead of catering to that, you know, to 66 percent

00:58:00.420 of Americans. Right. You have one side saying we demand that a woman be able to choose to do this

00:58:06.120 up until the day that the baby is born. Right. They never put an upper limit on it. And then

00:58:10.040 the other side saying we're going to get rid of the rape and incest exceptions. Right. Meaning

00:58:14.220 they're one side's catering to 19 percent and one side's catering to 30 percent. And I find that very

00:58:18.840 frustrating, Megan. I don't know about you. No, of course. And but I also feel like now it's going

00:58:25.640 to go the way it ought to go, because what the Supreme Court did in Roe and Casey was tell the one

00:58:31.000 side you don't get to fight anymore. You're it. It's over. We're it. Our decision is final.

00:58:36.520 And we now want you to accept this is final. And they didn't have buy in. You know, like

00:58:41.980 half the country, as I said before, 30 states in the country banned abortion entirely when Roe came

00:58:47.640 down. And then Casey comes along 22 years later and basically affirms Roe mostly. And not much

00:58:55.720 had changed. Still, more than half the states opposed abortion on demand. And now here we are

00:59:01.480 in twenty twenty two and twenty six states petitioned the government or the Supreme Court

00:59:06.780 to overturn Roe and Casey. Nothing has settled. They remained as ardent and angry about this issue

00:59:14.240 and it being taken away from the citizenry today as they were, you know, arguably back in 1973

00:59:20.640 and certainly back in 1992. So the court solved nothing. It injected itself into an area where

00:59:26.340 it did not have the right to be. This court in an explosive way, for sure, got the court out of it.

00:59:32.740 Finally. Right. It's been laboring under this role of trying to be a super legislature and decide,

00:59:37.840 well, what's an undue burden on a woman? Where do we draw the line? What's viability? What? Like,

00:59:42.660 they don't know. This is what Justice Scalia was saying all the time. He's like, I don't know anything.

00:59:46.840 He's like, how did I get asked these questions? You know what he was saying? If we go, he used to

00:59:52.120 point it to the Eighth Amendment, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and say,

00:59:56.960 OK, the court changes its opinion based on evolving standards of decency underneath that.

01:00:02.060 So yesterday it's it's it's decent. It's considered OK to execute a person who commits certain crimes.

01:00:09.280 But tomorrow, the evolving standards of decency could say that's no longer OK and that's cruel

01:00:14.820 and unusual punishment. And therefore, the Eighth Amendment applies. He said he used to say,

01:00:18.540 how do I know? I don't know anything. He said people used to come to me. They'd ask me like

01:00:23.040 about some the latest Hollywood star. All they see is a blank look on my face. I don't know shit.

01:00:28.120 I don't know about the evolving standards. That's what we have lawmakers for. They're the ones who

01:00:34.100 are supposed to keep their finger on the pulse to answer to the electorate, to be held accountable,

01:00:38.200 to be booted out of office if they misstep. And so that's what this decision is now doing,

01:00:43.100 saying, right. I don't trust Alito or Kagan or Breyer or Thomas to be my judge and evolving

01:00:50.580 standards of decency. I want somebody who I can fire. Right. That's what the court's trying to get

01:00:55.920 back to. Absolutely. And, you know, to me, I'm looking at this in the context of the bipartisan

01:01:02.700 gun legislation that was just passed. And to me, these are sort of two models. Right. There's the

01:01:07.420 model of having the Supreme Court do your dirty work and impose from above a standard that made. I mean,

01:01:11.680 I even would agree with that standard. Right. But that's you could hardly say that that is like

01:01:15.540 in an objective way, more democratic. But that model is to prevent Democrats from having to do

01:01:21.880 the hard work of convincing their fellow Americans that they're right. And when you look at how that

01:01:26.840 bipartisan gun control went, you know, Senator Murphy went in there with an upper limit. He went in there

01:01:32.140 knowing what he could ask for and knowing what he couldn't ask for. Right. He went in there with a

01:01:36.540 design to reassure his Republican colleagues that they were going to get somewhere where they could

01:01:42.880 both be not comfortable, maybe, but equally uncomfortable. Right. They did the hard work

01:01:47.700 of persuasion. And that's how we got that great gun safety bill. Right. Which, you know, satisfied

01:01:52.360 everybody a little bit, unsatisfied everybody a little bit more. That's what a democracy looks like.

01:01:56.460 That's what legislation is supposed to look like. And that is the model that I really wish the Democrats

01:02:00.820 would sort of be leaning into. But unfortunately, because of there's so much overreach, left wing

01:02:06.260 overreach going so far away from where most Americans are at, you know, they know that that's

01:02:11.000 kind of a lost cause. And so they look to the Supreme Court instead. And then you have situations

01:02:15.520 like this. Yeah, exactly. They've lost control of this body that they counted on to say it's a living,

01:02:23.200 breathing constitution that evolves over time instead of what I believe it actually is,

01:02:29.100 which is a document that, as Scalia would say, should have been interpreted interpreted based

01:02:33.400 on its actual text and, you know, through what is reasonable based on the actual text.

01:02:38.560 And then if you don't like where that leads us to the point about, oh, we're going to we got to deal

01:02:42.080 with what 18th century men thought and only those guys. No, you can amend it. You can amend the

01:02:47.420 Constitution like we did with the 19th Amendment, like we did in getting women's suffrage. There are in

01:02:52.260 today's day and age, that would have been a no brainer under the living constitution. They would have

01:02:56.360 brought a claim to say, oh, my God, of course, how can you be equal? How can a woman have true

01:02:59.660 liberty if she doesn't have the right to vote? And this court would have said, yeah, you're

01:03:03.220 absolutely right. But under the old system that all jurists really agreed with for the first 100

01:03:08.240 plus years of our existence, you had to go amend the Constitution if you wanted that. And they and

01:03:13.520 the support was there. And on an issue like abortion, it's not there. So we can't get a

01:03:17.780 constitutional amendment. And that's as it should be. So now it goes down to the state level.

01:03:20.920 But as I was saying to Charles Cook, the media has got a thumb on the scale and what we're going

01:03:26.080 to get. So what is it now? June? Is it still June? I've been on vacation. It's June. And all we're

01:03:33.560 going to get in July, in August, in September, in October, leading up to these midterms is

01:03:38.100 another terrible story about a woman who desperately needed or a young girl an abortion and couldn't get

01:03:46.600 it in one of these southern states. And we are not going to get any stories about women who

01:03:53.440 actually wound up having their babies because their state banned it and are so incredibly thankful

01:03:58.420 that they did because it's this incredible gift. And they now see that. And they were in a moment

01:04:03.920 of weakness when they wanted the abortion and they've seen it totally different. So how does that play?

01:04:09.140 Well, first of all, there's conservative media, right? They should definitely go out and find

01:04:12.420 those women. And I'm also very heartened to see on the right a kind of development of, you know,

01:04:17.060 I guess, encounter, you know, countervailing force to the woke capital, right, to the woke

01:04:21.320 corporations. You're now seeing, you know, more pressure on the right to support women who make

01:04:25.760 the decision to have those babies, right, you know, to have sort of tax credits for kids to have more

01:04:30.000 family support. So I think that's a really great development. In terms of what the media is going to

01:04:34.540 do, I totally agree with you. I mean, it's very clear they have their thumbs on the scales, not even so much

01:04:39.260 from a partisan point of view, but because the biggest divide in the abortion debate is actually

01:04:45.160 the college divide, you know, 70% of college educated Americans supported and only 50% of

01:04:50.300 people without a college degree do right in that, of course, is like, the number one dividing factor

01:04:55.040 in terms of what our media looks like. Everybody has a college degree, most people have a graduate

01:04:58.600 degree, they're in that class. And so they have all of those same values. You know, but I will say,

01:05:04.260 I do want to hear those stories, because like, right now, I feel quite skeptical that there are going

01:05:09.060 to be stories like that, just because there, there is so much private sector funding now to move women

01:05:15.440 to state to get women to states to get those abortions, right? There is so much attention

01:05:19.740 being paid to that. So if there are areas where women are going to be penalized for things like

01:05:24.060 miscarriages, or for things like, you know, ectopic pregnancies for things where they really,

01:05:29.000 really needed an abortion, can't get it and tragedy happens. I think that's actually important to

01:05:33.720 highlight, because you know, yeah, their legislators should be paying attention to that stuff,

01:05:37.500 we should be making sure that, you know, nobody is, you know, God forbid, endangered by any of this.

01:05:43.260 And now the other on the same score, you're not going to see much coverage, if at all,

01:05:47.560 of the pro life, which are really just assistance to pregnant women clinics that are getting fire

01:05:53.980 bombed, right? Places like Colorado, we saw some in Wisconsin, a couple weeks ago, that that'll get

01:06:00.960 totally ignored. And that that to me is truly insane. Because truly, who are the people like my mom

01:06:05.580 has been volunteering at those places for my entire life? What does she do? She goes out,

01:06:10.380 she buys baby bottles, she gets diapers, she get like, they make sure that mothers who are now

01:06:15.640 expecting babies, and they weren't planning on this pregnancy, have some assistance, and make sure

01:06:20.980 that they have a car seat to take the baby home and like things like that. Who the hell would bomb

01:06:25.040 that kind of a play? Right? Like, what kind of a sicko takes out their anger over this? But that story

01:06:31.140 gets buried by the media, Bhatia, that doesn't go along with the narrative. And they don't want

01:06:36.000 to tug on those heartstrings. No, absolutely. I mean, it's there definitely, you know, that you

01:06:40.940 can expect the liberal media to do as liberal media does, right, and keep pushing the Democrats agenda.

01:06:45.300 I mean, I totally agree with you. That's what we're very likely to see coming down the pike. I mean,

01:06:49.660 the question is, is that going to be enough to distract voters from inflation and crime and all the

01:06:54.880 ways in which Democrats are failing them? You know, another thing that I think we never hear

01:06:58.940 about is that that same, you know, college divide exists within communities that do often take

01:07:04.600 advantage of abortion, that do often find themselves in that situation. The Black community is deeply

01:07:09.060 ambivalent about abortion. Democrats act like this is, you know, on their behalf. Well, go and talk to

01:07:14.240 people in those communities. You know, it's not a simple thing. There's a lot of Christian people in

01:07:17.940 those communities, right? What are they thinking? What are they talking about at the dinner table? What's

01:07:22.280 going on in those churches, right? How are they going to vote in November? I really think that it's a lot

01:07:26.800 more complicated than the media wants us to know. Of course. So good to see you. Thank you for coming

01:07:33.420 on. It's wonderful to get your perspective, and there'll be plenty more opportunities to come back

01:07:37.400 on this. Thank you so much for having me. It was so great to see you. All right. Coming up,

01:07:43.200 you hear everywhere. I mean, you turn on CNN, you turn on MSNBC, you turn on any of the mainstream,

01:07:46.940 you're going to see woman after woman crying over this issue. And that's not to diminish their tears.

01:07:50.280 As I've said before, I understand them. I understand them perfectly. I mean, I've been talking to my

01:07:54.660 friends who are really, really upset. But where are where are the women and the men, but the women

01:08:02.100 in particular who are overjoyed about this ruling? You won't see them on the mainstream, but you will

01:08:07.900 see one right here. Lila Rose, who has dedicated her life to fighting for a decision like the one we

01:08:15.680 got on Friday, is here. And I will ask her how it felt to see that opinion. Our next guest is a pro-life

01:08:27.420 advocate and president and founder of Live Action, a nonprofit anti-abortion organization. Lila Rose,

01:08:35.440 she's been in this fight for years. I mean, it's something to see, right? When you look at the actual

01:08:40.620 decision and the opening summary of it, where it says held the constitution does not confer a right

01:08:49.200 to abortion. Roe and Casey are overruled and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the

01:08:56.000 people and their elected representatives. What did you feel? I mean, a lot of a lot of emotions,

01:09:03.440 but the main one, Megan, was gratitude because the court finally gave the pro-life movement a

01:09:11.080 fighting chance to protect children. I mean, that's what this was. This wasn't some big pro-life win

01:09:16.000 in the sense of the Supreme Court sides of the pro-life side. As you know, this was now pro-life

01:09:21.700 states can actually protect children in their states. And so gratitude, I mean, the day of this

01:09:27.560 decision on Friday, last Friday, abortion clinics were already shutting down in Alabama, in Texas,

01:09:33.220 in Utah, because the trigger laws, some trigger laws already went into effect. So it was just a

01:09:38.700 day of joy for those children whose lives were going to be saved. That's exactly right. What you

01:09:43.720 said, it gave the pro-life movement a fighting chance. That's what was taken away by Roe and Casey.

01:09:50.340 You're not allowed to fight. And as the Casey court in its hubris said, you will accept this as the final

01:09:57.140 decision and you will stop arguing is essentially what they said. You will now stand down and simply

01:10:02.980 accept this, which totally misunderstood the depth of the feeling on this issue, not just by Lila

01:10:10.460 Rose, but by nearly half the country, which, as I pointed out, 26 states supported the overturning

01:10:17.520 of these two decisions. Yeah. I mean, Megan, the the large majority of Americans support abortion

01:10:23.460 restrictions. Less than 20 percent of Americans don't want restrictions. So 80 percent plus of Americans

01:10:29.140 want abortion restrictions. And that's what Roe v. Wade prohibited effectively is having restrictions

01:10:35.020 state by state or made it a you know, this this this big battle in the courts every single time

01:10:39.740 any law, even a 15 week abortion ban, which was Mississippi's law that was contested. I mean,

01:10:44.620 15 week abortion ban. That's something that most of Europe has. I mean, we are one of the most extreme

01:10:49.820 nations in the world up there with North Korea and China with our extraordinary, extremely liberal

01:10:56.140 liberal abortion law. So the fact that the Supreme Court has done this, I mean, as a public movement,

01:11:00.740 we don't see this as full justice because we see these are humans with human rights and the right

01:11:05.620 to live is not something that can be decided upon by a majority vote. Right. But at least now the

01:11:10.880 majority vote can protect them. Before it was remember, it was seven men in 1973. It was seven men who

01:11:18.000 ruled Roe v. Wade. They decided that abortion was now some sort of a constitutional right. It has been

01:11:23.980 this tiny fraction of of individuals and men, I'll say that have been behind this. And, you know,

01:11:31.740 this this this message coming out from the left right now, the far left, you know, from politicians

01:11:37.600 are saying, you know, democracy is at risk because Roe v. Wade has been overruled. You've heard that,

01:11:42.500 you know, from, you know, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others saying that this is an attack on

01:11:47.440 our democracy, it's an attack on our country. I mean, it's wildly irrational. And but that's kind

01:11:54.720 of been the whole the whole the whole thing in this entire time with abortion on demand. The law

01:11:59.860 behind it has been wildly irrational. And finally, it's beginning to be set right. The the dissent takes

01:12:05.520 real issue with the majority and says, hey, you you you didn't give any thought at all to what what

01:12:11.700 women are going through, what the rights of a woman and what she what's in her best interest if she

01:12:17.080 wants to have an abortion. And truly, the same could be said for the dissent when it comes to

01:12:22.200 the rights of the unborn. I mean, they don't even tip the hat to, OK, third trimester, the rights kick

01:12:29.000 in, you know, like this is a real they talk about balance, but they spend absolutely no time on why

01:12:36.340 people like you have been fighting as hard as it's not that you just look at a woman and say,

01:12:40.720 too bad, suck it up. It's because there's something else that matters that's really

01:12:46.060 important. And people can decide, you know, where in the process it matters more, you would say right

01:12:52.400 from the moment of conception. But the dissent doesn't even tip its hat to that. Yeah. I mean,

01:12:57.000 there's a strange mythology that's kind of left over from, I think, the 1960s and 70s, like the sexual

01:13:04.320 revolution, which was a reaction in many ways to what was seen as the, you know, Puritan ideals that

01:13:10.580 preceded it. And it's just like mythology now that in a pregnancy, there's only one person.

01:13:16.320 It's the woman and there's not another human life involved. And the science is crystal clear here.

01:13:21.720 It has been for decades. We've known this, that human life doesn't begin at birth. Human life

01:13:26.060 begins at the moment of fertilization. And you have this embryo, then this fetus, and then this

01:13:29.360 newborn, then this toddler. And that's the span of the beginning of human being's life.

01:13:33.600 And so I think, you know, more and more I'm seeing millennials, Gen Z-ers, a lot of women,

01:13:40.820 millions of us who are passionately pro-life. And we're not buying that, I really think,

01:13:46.300 outdated and very irrational viewpoint that feminism or, you know, to be pro-woman is to be for killing

01:13:54.000 children in the womb. And instead, you can walk and chew gum at the same time. You know, you can be

01:13:58.740 a woman and be a mother and have an amazing future and an amazing career and an amazing life. And

01:14:04.320 actually having children is one of the most, I believe it's the most amazing thing you can do

01:14:08.680 with your life, whether you're a woman or a man. So that, you know, positive view of womanhood,

01:14:13.840 it's a positive view of children, is I think taking root more and more. And we're rejecting this

01:14:20.480 fear-based, restrictive view of womanhood that says we literally have to kill children and

01:14:27.400 to pregnancy in order to be advanced. Okay. So this is, this is an important point because you

01:14:33.860 heard, um, Ellie Mistel of the nation, MSNBC talking about how it's all these 18th century guys,

01:14:39.680 we have to just stick by their opinions. And it kind of goes back to in part what Alito was saying

01:14:44.160 in his majority. I, and I outlined it in my opening talking points, which is, you know, they, they said,

01:14:49.120 okay, the constitution is what it is. There's nothing about abortion in there, but yes, we have

01:14:53.060 recognized some implicit rights in the constitution only in a few cases. And so in deciding whether

01:14:59.600 whatever it is you're pitching to us is an implicit, right? We have to look at a couple of

01:15:03.600 things. And one of those things is, does that right that you're saying is implicit in the

01:15:06.840 constitution, though not explicit, have some long tradition in our country? Is it something that we

01:15:11.380 always acknowledge it wasn't in there, but like we always said, you know, we're going to live like

01:15:15.420 this. We're going to allow this. And abortion is not even arguably on the list. Now this has the

01:15:20.520 dissent and some pundits on the left saying we can't just stop in terms of our rights and our

01:15:26.500 analysis of the constitution with the way the country was in 1868, when the 14th amendment was

01:15:31.520 passed, we don't, women couldn't even vote back then. So it's so archaic for us to be saying

01:15:36.760 that's where we stop. Okay. So let's say, and you can make the argument the opposite way. I mean,

01:15:41.660 Scalia would say, yes, you can, you can do that. And if you don't like the outcome, you go and you

01:15:45.100 petition for an amendment to the constitution, you do what needs to be done to change things like we did

01:15:48.820 with the 19th amendment, but putting that to the side. Okay. Let's look at modern day. Where are

01:15:54.260 we? Cause it's, it's knowable how people feel in 2022 America. Are we still at the point where

01:16:00.040 men run everything? Men make all the decisions. What's happening in the 50 States when it comes

01:16:04.480 to abortion? How many States supported this push to overturn Roe versus Casey? Was it all States that

01:16:09.780 have a majority male legislature, Mississippi? It doesn't pan out well for the dissenters or the left.

01:16:17.420 When you ask those questions. Well, and now Megan, we don't even know who's a woman and who's a man

01:16:22.500 anymore. So it doesn't. Oh, they're very clear. Have you, can you, Matt, I can, you, I've been

01:16:27.040 shocked at the number of people who will actually say women now in the context of this discussion,

01:16:30.740 they say birthing people. We're not allowed to be women anymore. Now we're just birthing persons,

01:16:34.700 but listen, I mean, they've lost the plot that you, you can't, it's not sustainable because

01:16:40.700 first of all, like all the major pro-life organizations are led by women. Um, you know, 75% of live action,

01:16:46.580 6 million following is women, mostly Gen Z and millennial women. It, it, this is a women's

01:16:52.580 led movement. And yes, we love the men. We've got men in our movement too, but to say, and to,

01:16:57.460 to, and also this idea that, you know, there's some historicity to legal abortion that we need,

01:17:02.260 there's some sort of legal precedent for abortion as a right is preposterous. I mean, historically,

01:17:08.000 there have been laws against abortion, you know, for hundreds of years, whether it's British common

01:17:11.740 law or American law and the, and also it's been seen societally as it should be as a very sad,

01:17:17.460 negative thing. I mean, any woman who walks into an abortion clinic, she's not walking in feeling

01:17:22.640 powerful and triumphant. She knows deep in her heart, she's, she's walking there out of fear,

01:17:27.260 out of maybe even coercion because of loss, because of concerns for her financial status,

01:17:32.480 her education, whatever it is, we know deep down as a society, you know, and people are really honest

01:17:37.360 with themselves that it would be better if there was no abortion. And I, and I, in my hearts to

01:17:42.580 hearts with pro-choice friends or with, you know, abortion advocates, even when they've really been

01:17:46.820 honest, it's like, yeah, it would be better if there was none of it. It's always been that way

01:17:50.540 because we know it takes an innocent human life. So now the, the, the focus should be besides legal

01:17:55.160 protection, the focus of the pro-life movement is, and it has been for decades. Again, this doesn't

01:17:59.640 get any media coverage, Megan, as you know, but it has been okay, make life better for pregnant

01:18:05.100 moms and young moms, make life better for young families, provide material resources and care,

01:18:10.480 strengthen up marriages, make marriages stronger, you know, educate young kids to respect their

01:18:15.940 bodies and respect each other in the way that they date so that they're not just hooking up all the

01:18:20.420 time and getting pregnant. And, you know, we have all of this unplanned pregnancy. This is a culture

01:18:24.660 of life that we're trying to build. And we're doing a lot of concrete work in that space and have

01:18:29.080 been in the pro-life movement. And, and really enough with this lie that we've been telling

01:18:33.680 ourselves as a society now since 1973, that abortion is a human right. No life is a human

01:18:38.200 right. It's even in our constitution, by the way, that is in the constitution under the 14th

01:18:42.140 amendment. No state shall deprive anyone of the right to life without due process. I mean,

01:18:47.780 equal protection under the law, you could argue the pro-life position from there that it's in the

01:18:52.280 constitution. Abortion's not. Now let's focus on making life better for everybody. I think that's,

01:18:57.260 that's your, that's where we can come together as a country.

01:18:59.680 What did you make of the Anna Navarro comments about, you know, I've got, um, I've got a, uh,

01:19:06.560 a relative who's got down syndrome and I've got a relative whose son is autistic and there, you know,

01:19:14.240 the ability to get state assistance with these children is a lot harder than, uh, people will

01:19:20.880 tell you. And therefore, therefore abortion needs to remain legal. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine

01:19:28.280 how her family must have felt her extended family. If they heard her say those really vicious words.

01:19:34.140 I mean, it's, it's ableism at its finest, um, and ageism at its finest, you know, because I'm more

01:19:40.500 able-bodied than you as a person with down syndrome or you as a person with autism, then it would be

01:19:45.680 better for you to not live. And I'm going to spout off my belief about that on national television.

01:19:50.280 And you're my own family member. I mean, is there anything more, um, depraved than wishing aloud

01:19:55.980 on national television that your own family member hadn't been born and, and it had been

01:20:00.720 aborted instead? I mean, it, it just shows again, the divide in our national consciousness on this

01:20:05.560 matter. And I do think, I mean, I even heard from some pro-choice people again, that were disgusted

01:20:10.220 by her comments. I mean, they still consider themselves pro-choice. They're still kind of

01:20:13.140 hanging on to that abortion, you know, ideology. They're still, you know, working through it in

01:20:17.660 their own minds, but even then they know, okay, that doesn't sound right, you know? And, but that's

01:20:21.840 what it is, right? That's what abortion has been, Megan, as you know, from the beginning,

01:20:26.140 when, when Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger in the early 20th century,

01:20:31.600 at the time their weapon of choice, you could say was, you know, birth control and forced

01:20:35.620 sterilization. They were behind forced sterilization efforts, but they wanted to limit and control

01:20:40.400 the populations that they saw as less fit. And that included the black population, minority

01:20:46.420 groups. It included people with disabilities, intellectual and physical disabilities. And, um,

01:20:51.820 Margaret Sanger was very open about this. She was a eugenicist proudly. And eugenics is this idea

01:20:56.520 that we can create, you know, a better, cleaner race. Um, that's more perfect, but a more perfect

01:21:01.020 bloodline. And that's the foundation of abortion, um, ideology in this country. And there's no surprise

01:21:08.360 then that 60% plus in this country alone of children who are tested to be found with Down syndrome are

01:21:14.020 killed because they have Down syndrome. And then in a country like the Netherlands in Europe, it's a hundred

01:21:19.460 percent. They actually celebrated. We have a hundred percent, no Down syndrome in this country.

01:21:24.200 It's not because children weren't being conceived with Down syndrome. It's because they were being

01:21:27.540 killed before birth. So that's the gross future of abortion on demand. And that's what, that's what

01:21:33.700 the Supreme court has now given us a chance to fight against.

01:21:35.920 And of course you don't need a reason at all. I mean, you can just say, uh, it's, it's a boy and

01:21:39.920 I wanted a girl. I'm killing it. I mean, it's right. It's like our rules are non-existent. And I mean,

01:21:45.540 you can find out now what the potential eye color is and decide, I mean, it's really there, there's very

01:21:50.320 few limitations on abortion, especially in States like the ones where, you know, I've been living and

01:21:56.240 live now, um, New York and now Connecticut. Uh, so it's, you know, we were due for a correction of some

01:22:03.000 type if you look at majority opinion. Uh, but let me ask you about the other side, because I mentioned

01:22:07.340 in the break that, you know, if you turn on any sort of mainstream news, you're going to hear a crying

01:22:11.840 woman. And I understand, I, I might, I understand. And I have empathy for the, for the women who are

01:22:16.400 crying over this. I do, because I do think they've been misled by courts for 50 years about what their

01:22:20.820 rights are and they're confused. And they, you know, the media keeps telling them that we have this

01:22:24.400 extremist court, blah, blah, blah. Um, but I think if you go to the more, most extreme case,

01:22:29.460 it always makes you pause. Right. And the, and on the daily, the podcast with the New York times

01:22:33.060 today, they were talking about, they interviewed four abortion clinic workers in States where the

01:22:37.460 trigger laws kicked in already. And they, there was one abortion clinic worker who was emotional and

01:22:43.820 talking about a grandmother who called about her 14 year old granddaughter. Here's that soundbite.

01:22:49.360 Um, this patient called me for her granddaughter. She's a minor. I'm going to cry. Okay.

01:23:03.880 It's okay.

01:23:05.100 She asked us if I can schedule her an appointment. And I told her, unfortunately,

01:23:09.560 we're not doing abortion care in the clinic until further notice. And she told me, what are we

01:23:21.640 supposed to do? She's only 14. This was not her fault. I'm just sitting there listening to the grandma cry.

01:23:35.740 And she went on to say that it was, I can't remember if it was a rape or an incest, but it

01:23:41.840 was one of those situations. And that's the kind of thing that really does move hearts and minds on

01:23:45.840 the other side. Yeah. I mean, Megan, listen, it's, it's heartbreaking about if, if she was a victim of

01:23:52.600 rape or incest, or even if just you're 14 and you're, you're facing an unplanned pregnancy, how,

01:23:57.480 how challenging, how devastating that can be. And, and no one is denying that, but let me tell you how

01:24:03.860 many women I have spoken with Megan over the years who were that, who was that 14 or 15 or 16 year old

01:24:10.640 girl who went and had the abortion. I mean, the grandmother is negotiating it, right? It's like

01:24:14.820 the family gets together and says, you're going to, let's go get you that abortion. And years,

01:24:18.880 decades later, they are sitting there in pain, regretting it. So again, you know, that, that

01:24:24.680 monolith viewpoint coming from, you know, New York times or NPR is that the girl who's pregnant and,

01:24:31.460 and doesn't have an abortion, she's doomed, right? Or abortion is going to somehow get her on with her

01:24:35.980 life and set her up for success. And that's a lie for many, many women, for many, many girls.

01:24:40.720 And their stories are never told mysteriously, you know, the girl, the woman who regrets her teenage

01:24:46.200 abortion, her story doesn't get told. Why is that? They literally argue that in the papers and the

01:24:52.000 dissent reflects it as well, that equality is not possible for a woman who is unable to obtain,

01:24:59.040 you know, whatever they would call it, reproductive right care, abortion care,

01:25:02.880 that it's not possible. And I've heard, you know, I've heard people who I know,

01:25:07.200 I'm thinking of one friend in particular, who I know had an abortion, who went on to become a

01:25:10.760 professional, argue, like, I couldn't have done this if I had had the child. And I always think

01:25:16.400 to myself, well, how do you know that? How do you know that? You know what I think it is, Megan? I think

01:25:22.220 we've got a whole generation of deeply wounded women and men from abortions in their past. And so

01:25:30.040 the way to deal with that, I mean, that's a life that was destroyed, that could have lived, that

01:25:34.460 could be walking the world, could be at their family reunions, could be picking up, texting them

01:25:38.860 each day, that could be their son or daughter today. And the way they deal with that reality

01:25:43.200 is they have to say it was the right decision. You know, they have to kind of double down and dig in

01:25:48.440 their heels and be like, No, I had to do that. I had to have that abortion. And the reality is,

01:25:52.560 no, you didn't, you didn't have to do that. And that's, you know, the message of our movement is

01:25:56.680 not only did you not have to do that, we're going to help you not have to do that, you know, we want

01:26:00.660 to support each other here. But that's what's so devastating about this is a lot of that doubling

01:26:05.360 down that we're seeing, I believe, you know, in media and amongst, you know, different abortion

01:26:10.340 activists and advocates is, is pain, deep buried pain and grief, where they're justifying past

01:26:17.060 choices or the past choices that they helped other people make like that grandma, you know,

01:26:20.980 making that choice kind of for that 14 year old. And they're the way to justify it is to try to say,

01:26:26.700 you know, my life would have sucked without it. And going forward, we need abortions for everyone.

01:26:31.700 And I'm gonna say one more thing about the media stuff, Megan, you know, it baffles me,

01:26:36.560 the abortion industry is an industry, they make money off of abortions, they make 500 600 to 1000s up to

01:26:42.340 10s of 1000s, if it's a late term abortion up to $20,000 for some of these late term abortions.

01:26:47.060 And they make money off of it, it's it can be very profitable for abortion, abortion workers,

01:26:52.360 for for to watch what's happening in the media right now, I have never seen more marketing for

01:26:57.820 an industry. Maybe maybe the pharmaceutical company with vaccines, you could say you could

01:27:02.420 maybe make that debate if you want to, but the marketing for abortion by mainstream media groups,

01:27:07.240 it's it's really stunning to witness. And it's been going on for decades. Now, you can't get a word

01:27:12.140 in edgewise, if you're a pro lifer, you know, with pro life facts, and you know, facts about human

01:27:16.080 development, the risks of the abortion procedure. No, there's no space for you on the program.

01:27:20.840 You know, if you're a pro life, but if you're in support of abortion, they will go ad nauseum.

01:27:26.900 For that's exactly I'm looking forward to the New York Times podcast that features you.

01:27:30.660 And some of the women that you've been talking about, they're not going to do it.

01:27:34.360 Yeah. And you know what else? I mean, there's just a case in point. I did an interview with CNN

01:27:37.560 for this mini documentary, they won't have me on live primetime. It's just this documentary on this

01:27:42.120 like strange activist that I am. I'm like, there's millions of me. I'm not the only one that you know,

01:27:46.400 they're trying to make me out to be some, you know, one of one in one in a million. I'm one of

01:27:51.400 millions. But anyways, and they said, Well, what would you say to this woman in this terrible

01:27:56.000 situation who really wants an abortion? You know, what would you say to her? You know, you're the

01:27:59.940 counterpoint, etc. And I said, You know what, no, the guests you need, that is the counterpoint,

01:28:05.400 if you will, to the woman who really wants that abortion, is the child who survived an abortion

01:28:10.600 attempt on their life, right? Or the child whose mother at the last minute chose life. And now

01:28:16.920 they're out there advocating for life. And one of those people's on my staff, Christina Bennett,

01:28:20.460 her mother was sitting on the abortion table, had this check of conscience in her heart, got up,

01:28:25.080 got off. Christina is this beautiful mother, foster mom. Now, she's amazing. She's one of our spokeswomen.

01:28:30.320 That's the counterpoint. You know, I'm not the victim here. I'm an advocate. The counterpoint is the

01:28:35.820 girl Claire Caldwell, who was literally almost aborted, her twin was aborted,

01:28:40.160 they tried to kill her to she survived. She ended up getting carried to term. Now her twin is dead

01:28:45.640 because of an abortion, but she's alive. She's an abortion survivor. Take put her on NPR. You know,

01:28:51.220 I want to hear her story. You know, the New York Times doing a profile on her. No, they're not going

01:28:55.420 to because that doesn't fit their narrative. What about that? Because we do we are hearing a lot

01:28:59.380 about women are going to die as a result of this women are going to die as a result of this. And you

01:29:03.380 know, I don't that that could be true. I think it is very easy to get an abortion

01:29:07.040 across state lines if you really need one or want one. And certainly with the abortion

01:29:11.720 medications that you can now get, I'm sure, you know, it's going to be harder, but it's not going

01:29:17.580 to be impossible for women to get abortions in these states. But, you know, it doesn't talk about

01:29:22.080 how the fact that like a baby dies every time an abortion is performed. And I realize it's not yet

01:29:27.400 an actual baby that can sustain life on its own. But there's no denying potential human life.

01:29:32.040 I know. Right. It's like there's no denying the viability argument. Just again, it kind of baffles

01:29:37.280 me that they're so stuck on this when you're not viable when you're a newborn. You know, you're not

01:29:42.680 viable when you're a two year old. You're hardly viable when you're an 18 year old. You're in your

01:29:46.240 mother's basement basement. But, you know, in this economy sometimes. But my point is, we need each

01:29:50.420 other and children always need their parents. And to say, well, the child's not viable, you know,

01:29:55.600 before 21 weeks. And so you can kill it. You're not supposed to be viable outside the womb at 20

01:30:00.820 weeks. You're supposed to be dependent on your mother. And when you're a newborn baby,

01:30:04.300 you're also supposed to be dependent on your mother or someone who's mothering you. So

01:30:07.480 this idea that, you know, the child has to do it on its own, it just it's it's it's wildly

01:30:13.800 irrational. It doesn't even make sense. And I think we need to break a different argument

01:30:17.160 because you're you're so good at responding to these. What about the argument that what kind of a

01:30:22.860 life are these kids being set up for, you know, born to a mother that doesn't really want them want

01:30:26.920 them? Not all mothers will reverse their decision making and think, oh, it's such a blessing.

01:30:31.000 You know, some are like, I don't need another kid and I don't want this kid. And they maybe the

01:30:34.980 mother was right. She's not cut out for motherhood, but she doesn't make a good decision when the kid's

01:30:38.600 born. She doesn't put it up for adoption. You know, what about that situation where that's I

01:30:43.880 think where a lot of people say, like, yeah, you want to get it's an unwanted pregnancy. It was born

01:30:47.260 of something horrible, like a like a rape or something. And the mother's never going to love the child.

01:30:52.340 And it's destined for a terrible life. Yeah, no one's destined for a terrible life. I mean,

01:30:57.780 that's a lie. No one is no one is doomed. And, you know, our responsibility is what keep doing

01:31:03.460 what we're doing, the movement and keep growing it. Networks of support, social safety nets,

01:31:07.820 providing support for young moms, single moms, providing support for young families, that material

01:31:12.640 care in pregnancy resource centers, that material care in the foster care system. I mean, most of the

01:31:17.460 pro-lifers I know either donate to foster care parents like myself or they are foster care parents

01:31:21.960 or they're supporting them practically in some way. We can we can do better. We can help each

01:31:26.360 other. The solution can never be to kill somebody who's innocent. You know, we can never turn to

01:31:31.440 violence, especially against an innocent child because of social ills. You know, that can't be

01:31:38.020 that's a nonstarter. How about this from Megan Rapinoe, soccer star about the decision? It doesn't keep

01:31:45.580 one single person safer. It doesn't keep one single child safer. Really? Like you can't. I mean,

01:31:57.740 yeah, I mean, I would I mean, I would just say, you know, can you just look at a look at a biology

01:32:04.720 textbook or look at a human development chart? Go to your OBGYN's office and look on the wall of the

01:32:09.980 development chart of the different stages of pregnancy and the development of that baby.

01:32:13.100 This is a human life. It's this is a child, someone's son or daughter. So if we're going to

01:32:17.400 play the game of it's not a human life, it's not a child. Why do we even need abortion? You know,

01:32:22.000 if it's not alive, why do you need to end the pregnancy? There's there's nothing there should

01:32:25.180 be nothing there. Right. We're it's just talking nonsense at some point. And, you know, that's why

01:32:30.520 laws matter, Megan, because we can educate. But some people are going to just persist in wrong

01:32:36.400 thinking. And that's where we need we do need legal protections for children. You know,

01:32:39.800 there are people out there who will not be reasoned with. But the good news is most people

01:32:45.120 will be reasoned with. And I see people becoming pro-life literally every day. You know, we're

01:32:49.640 reaching 15 million, 20 million people a week with our content. And last week it was like, you know,

01:32:54.260 a crazy amount over the weekend. And people literally send us messages on the daily multiple

01:32:58.860 times. I was pro-abortion or pro-choice. Now I'm pro-life. Thank you so much for this information.

01:33:04.840 And people are changing on this. They're waking up and seeing this is a child. Abortion ends the

01:33:09.500 life of a child. We got to do better than this. And now, as you said at the top, it's on. Now it's

01:33:15.060 on. Now you can't be silenced in making your point of view clear because there's going to be a vote

01:33:21.300 and there will be people on both sides that need information. And then people can make up their own

01:33:26.300 minds state by state, vote with their feet if they don't want the result in their state. Trust me,

01:33:30.560 as, you know, a more right-leaning person who's been living in blue states for my entire life,

01:33:34.420 I've had to vote with my feet. I did it within the past couple of years. Didn't wind up in a

01:33:38.980 particularly red state, but at least one that was a little bit more reasonable. And I wanted to stay

01:33:42.540 in the Northeast. But we've been doing this for a long time and it can continue to be done.

01:33:47.080 Lila Rose, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate it. All the best. Tomorrow,

01:33:53.380 we have a newsmaker who has never before been on this show, and it's a great time to have her.

01:33:58.360 And she's been requested by a lot of you quite a bit. Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota will be

01:34:03.860 with us. And what a great time to have her as these states take up the abortion issue,

01:34:09.060 as hers has. She's getting a lot of blowback on it, but also a lot of support. So we'll get into

01:34:14.400 whether these policies make sense, whether there's going to be blowback on the GOP as the states make

01:34:19.240 these decisions and who better to ask. OK, so in the meantime, download The Megyn Kelly Show on Apple,

01:34:23.920 Pandora, Spotify and Stitcher so you don't miss an episode.

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01:34:47.960 Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda and no fear.

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The Megyn Kelly Show - June 27, 2022

Roe Overturned - Political, Legal, and Personal Implications, with Charles Cooke, Alan Dershowitz, Lila Rose, and Batya Ungar-Sargon ｜ Ep. 345

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