The Michael Knowles Show - Ep. 1034 - Goodbye, Roe! [Bonus Hour]

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00:00:38.440 Welcome to the Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:41.600 I should say welcome back to the Michael Knowles Show.

00:00:44.540 I know that I'm just starting the show, but I am starting the show for the second time today.

00:00:50.300 And I am starting the show.

00:00:52.300 I've already got a show that went out.

00:00:54.000 It's already out there in your RSS feeds.

00:00:55.700 But I'm doing the show again because just after my show went out, I get on an airplane.

00:01:02.680 I had a wonderful night last night.

00:01:04.720 I was with the Young America's Foundation in Santa Barbara.

00:01:07.640 Lots of great young conservatives.

00:01:09.540 I was feeling energized about the country.

00:01:11.860 We do the show, talk about all these great Supreme Court decisions that have been coming

00:01:15.420 out this term.

00:01:16.080 And just, I'm getting on the plane, the show airs.

00:01:21.860 We get this news.

00:01:24.640 Roe versus Wade.

00:01:26.540 Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

00:01:29.100 Two of the worst decisions ever made in the history of the United States.

00:01:33.420 In the case of Roe, probably the single worst Supreme Court decision ever led to the deaths

00:01:39.840 of 63 million babies in the United States since 1973.

00:01:44.500 Those two egregiously, hideously, constitutionally absurd, morally insane cases overruled.

00:01:56.060 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization.

00:01:58.880 I said, when this happened, I'm on the airplane.

00:02:01.500 I see this.

00:02:02.320 I tell the team, we're doing another show today.

00:02:04.260 Get ready.

00:02:04.800 We're doing another one.

00:02:06.500 This is the most surprising and I would have to say the best political event to occur in

00:02:15.620 this country in my lifetime.

00:02:18.480 Remember this date.

00:02:19.600 June 24th, 2022.

00:02:24.000 One of the most important dates in American history.

00:02:30.280 So the decision comes out.

00:02:32.840 I'm getting ready.

00:02:34.020 I say, I've got a little bit of time before I go to the studio.

00:02:36.440 I'm going to read this decision.

00:02:37.900 I assume most of you, you've been at work all day.

00:02:40.460 You probably haven't had time to read through this 213 page decision.

00:02:46.760 But I think I can sum up this 213 page decision in about 30 seconds to a minute.

00:02:53.920 Here's what happened.

00:02:55.220 You get the decision of the court, six to three rules to uphold the Mississippi pro-life law

00:03:02.440 that brought this to the Supreme Court in the first place.

00:03:06.440 So you get the conservatives and you get John Roberts.

00:03:09.520 John Roberts, the chief justice.

00:03:11.240 He's a swing vote.

00:03:12.140 He's supposed to be a conservative, but he's pretty squishy.

00:03:14.360 So you get Alito.

00:03:15.780 You get Thomas.

00:03:17.920 You get Kavanaugh.

00:03:18.840 You get Barrett.

00:03:19.460 You get Gorsuch.

00:03:20.500 You get chief justice Roberts vote to uphold the Mississippi law.

00:03:24.360 Then the three libs say they're not going to uphold the law.

00:03:27.420 But the decision that everyone's talking about is not the 6-3 decision.

00:03:31.260 It's a 5-4 decision.

00:03:33.540 Because five justices, it's the conservatives, no Roberts, vote to go further than just upholding

00:03:39.960 the Mississippi law.

00:03:41.100 They vote to overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

00:03:44.220 So here's what they say.

00:03:46.060 The court majority, written by Sam Alito, basically identical to that leaked draft that we saw some

00:03:51.300 weeks ago.

00:03:52.480 They say the Mississippi law is legit and the Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Roe v. Wade are

00:03:59.380 not legit.

00:04:00.580 Done.

00:04:00.900 Then the libs scream and they say, but we really want abortion. 0.96

00:04:07.100 Then Chief Justice Roberts says, in his own opinion, he says, hey guys, look, can we please

00:04:12.800 just not deal with the whole Roe v. Wade thing right now?

00:04:16.120 Can we maybe take that up at a later date?

00:04:17.980 We don't, let's not talk about that.

00:04:20.040 Then the court majority says, nope, sorry, Chief Justice Roberts.

00:04:23.420 We are talking about that.

00:04:25.040 Then enters Brett Kavanaugh in his own concurring opinion.

00:04:28.980 And he says, yep, I totally agree with the court majority, but I want to be really, really

00:04:32.980 clear here.

00:04:34.060 The court has basically nothing to say about abortion.

00:04:38.060 One of the briefs that was submitted to the court when this case was being heard was written

00:04:43.800 by Robbie George and John Finnis.

00:04:45.660 These are two conservative legal scholars who argued that actually not only should the court

00:04:52.980 overturn Roe v. Wade and send the issue of abortion back to the states, but actually the

00:04:59.500 court should overrule Roe v. Wade and outlaw abortion nationwide. 0.81

00:05:03.940 So don't make it just an issue for the legislators.

00:05:06.380 Actually go in and we say, we the justices are going to outlaw abortion throughout the United

00:05:11.440 States because of the 14th Amendment, because of equal protection under the law.

00:05:15.680 Kavanaugh's opinion that he filed separately says, no, that's not correct.

00:05:20.020 We reject that view.

00:05:21.460 This is only about submitting the issue back to the states.

00:05:25.620 Then the justices whine some more and they say, no, no, Brett Kavanaugh, you're downplaying

00:05:32.320 this.

00:05:32.640 This isn't really a modest decision.

00:05:34.600 This isn't really a narrow, limited decision.

00:05:36.900 The decision here in Dobbs is going to imperil all sorts of other issues.

00:05:42.040 And it's really interesting the way that the liberals argued this.

00:05:46.200 They didn't have a good argument as to where the constitutional right to an abortion shows

00:05:52.540 up in the document because it's just not there because it was made up.

00:05:55.680 It was a preposterous opinion at the time.

00:05:57.900 And the honest left-wing legal scholars, even the ones who support legal abortion, have admitted

00:06:03.140 that since then.

00:06:04.620 Well, yes, we want abortion. 1.00

00:06:06.340 Maybe we should even uphold Roe because it's been on the books a long time.

00:06:09.580 But it's not a well-argued case.

00:06:12.120 Frankly, even Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed the quote-unquote right to an

00:06:16.400 abortion, actually overruled parts of Roe v. Wade because Roe v. Wade was a ridiculous 0.78

00:06:20.480 decision.

00:06:20.900 So the libs are arguing here with Kavanaugh and with the majority on the court, and they're

00:06:25.680 saying, you're downplaying this.

00:06:27.200 You're saying this is really narrowly tailored.

00:06:29.440 And we're not going to really make a good argument for abortion here, but we're going 0.72

00:06:33.660 to scare all the other Americans and say, well, if we allow the court to overrule Roe v.

00:06:38.820 Wade, they might overrule the Griswold case, the Griswold case which found a constitutional

00:06:44.200 right to condoms. 0.91

00:06:45.460 This might overrule Lawrence v. Texas, which found a constitutional right to gay sex.

00:06:50.520 This might overrule Obergefell v. Hodges, which found a brand new definition of marriage that

00:06:56.860 has never existed anywhere in all of human history until Anthony Kennedy, the romantic

00:07:00.700 poet of the Supreme Court, decided to find one somewhere in the emanations and the penumbras

00:07:04.920 and whatever bottom of the bong he was smoking at that time.

00:07:08.380 And so that was the argument from the liberals.

00:07:11.560 They said, look, guys, even if you don't think the abortion argument is very strong, what

00:07:16.220 about all these other things? 0.99

00:07:17.500 The conservatives are coming for your condoms and your gay stuff. 0.98

00:07:21.040 And the majority on the court said, no, we're not doing that at all. 0.98

00:07:26.360 But then in comes Clarence Thomas and Clarence Thomas has his own concurring opinion.

00:07:31.360 And he says, yeah, well, but actually maybe we should come for those things.

00:07:35.780 And, and it's frankly, the most interesting part of this opinion, the most interesting

00:07:42.200 part of this ruling is that Clarence Thomas concurring opinion, because it's the most ambitious,

00:07:48.460 it goes the furthest.

00:07:50.020 It doesn't say we're just going to stop here with Roe v. Wade, with Planned Parenthood v.

00:07:54.280 Casey sending abortion back to the States.

00:07:55.720 It says, no, we're going to undo a whole lot of other liberal jurisprudence.

00:08:01.640 Clarence Thomas wanted to go further.

00:08:03.000 There was this question when the leaked draft came out and the draft was written by Sam

00:08:08.780 Alito.

00:08:09.620 A lot of conservatives were wondering, hey, wait a second, why isn't Clarence Thomas the

00:08:13.900 one writing this opinion?

00:08:15.500 We know that Clarence Thomas hates Roe and Casey.

00:08:18.480 We know that Clarence Thomas hates abortion.

00:08:20.740 He's the senior most judge on the court.

00:08:22.480 So why isn't he the one writing it?

00:08:25.300 Now we see why.

00:08:26.620 Because Clarence Thomas wanted to go further than the court did.

00:08:32.400 Clarence Thomas took issue with what is called substantive due process.

00:08:39.260 Substantive due process is this invention by liberals on the court to find a constitutional

00:08:45.000 right to all sorts of things that they want that don't actually appear in the constitution.

00:08:48.460 And so you have an interesting little contradiction here from some of the conservatives, which is

00:08:56.500 the liberals have no argument whatsoever to defend abortion in the constitution. 0.97

00:09:01.880 So they're just fear mongering about all these other stupid court decisions that they think 0.98

00:09:07.980 that people like and they think will scare people into voting for Democrats in the midterms. 0.98

00:09:13.220 Then you've got some conservative legal scholars and some conservatives on the court saying,

00:09:16.780 no, those things aren't threatened at all.

00:09:18.460 But then you've got Clarence Thomas, who I think is making the more honest argument.

00:09:21.680 And he's saying, no, those things actually probably should be threatened.

00:09:24.140 You're right.

00:09:24.640 They're not threatened in this opinion of the court, but perhaps they should be.

00:09:29.560 And of course they should be.

00:09:32.120 In something like Griswold, the Griswold case, the court finds a constitutional right to condoms.

00:09:38.960 Maybe you like condoms.

00:09:40.440 Maybe you think condoms should be legal.

00:09:41.920 I strongly suspect that the vast majority of Americans, if asked their opinion on condoms,

00:09:48.300 would vote to have legal condoms. 0.59

00:09:51.380 But does anyone really believe condoms are in the constitution?

00:09:54.620 Show me the condom clause of the constitution.

00:09:56.840 I don't see it.

00:09:58.700 Listen, I didn't go to a fancy law school, but I just don't see it. 0.88

00:10:02.180 How about gay sexual behavior? 1.00

00:10:06.500 Lawrence v. Texas discovers a constitutional right to gay sexual behavior. 0.96

00:10:10.560 Gay sexual behavior has broadly been tolerated throughout most of American history.

00:10:16.580 It's been against the law in certain parts of the country.

00:10:19.460 And those laws have remained on the books, though they rarely were enforced. 0.95

00:10:23.660 And maybe you think that gay sexual behavior is totally fine. 1.00

00:10:28.380 Maybe you think homosexual sodomy, totally a fine thing. 1.00

00:10:31.180 I bet if you put it up to a vote with the vast majority of Americans, they'd vote to have it be legal. 0.89

00:10:36.380 Where is the sodomy clause of the constitution?

00:10:38.840 Can you find it for me?

00:10:41.100 Do I need to get a magnifying glass out to look just beneath the emanations and just over the penumbras

00:10:46.340 of the special mystery of life clauses?

00:10:49.480 Because I don't see it.

00:10:50.380 It's just not there.

00:10:51.400 How about Obergefell?

00:10:52.660 Are you seriously going to tell me that the framers of the constitution

00:10:56.700 believed that they were redefining marriage to an extent that had never been probably even

00:11:05.680 imagined in human history to say that sexual difference has nothing to do with marriage?

00:11:10.340 And then that true definition of marriage, that marriage can be between a man and a woman

00:11:15.160 or a man and a man or a woman and a woman, that that just lay dormant, lay hidden for all of American history

00:11:22.420 until about seven or eight years ago when Anthony Kennedy, in his insight and wisdom,

00:11:28.800 discovered it there.

00:11:29.540 Are you really going to tell me that?

00:11:30.700 If you put it up for a vote today, I don't know what would happen actually on marriage.

00:11:36.420 Every time that gay marriage, quote unquote, was put up for a vote, it was shot down.

00:11:43.260 Even in California, it was shot down.

00:11:45.880 So I don't know if you put it up for a vote, maybe it wouldn't get shot down.

00:11:49.360 But today I suspect it probably would be, it would be upheld.

00:11:52.680 But regardless of your views on marriage, show me that definition in the constitution.

00:11:59.680 You're not going to find that there.

00:12:01.660 And so the liberals do have a point.

00:12:04.100 The liberals do have a point.

00:12:06.960 They have wielded the courts to push radical policies for at least 50 years now.

00:12:13.900 I guess much more than that, probably more like 70 years.

00:12:17.460 And they have perverted our jurisprudence.

00:12:20.040 They have destroyed the integrity of the court.

00:12:22.620 They've made our politics coarser, more dangerous, more violent, less democratic for that matter.

00:12:29.940 It's very funny to me that the people who wrap themselves in the mantle of democracy

00:12:34.420 are the ones protesting right now and trying to dox the justices

00:12:38.640 and screaming their heads off outside the Supreme Court.

00:12:41.240 Whatever you think about abortion, this decision,

00:12:44.580 Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization,

00:12:46.780 is one of the most pro-democracy decisions ever.

00:12:50.780 It might be the single most pro-democracy decision ever in the history of the United States.

00:12:55.500 It takes a matter that the courts, the nine robed lawyers on the Supreme Court,

00:13:00.240 had taken away from the people to decide and returns it to the people to decide.

00:13:05.360 That's pro-democracy.

00:13:07.560 And yet the alleged pro-democracy crowd,

00:13:09.500 the ones who shriek and scream and clutch their pearls about our sacred, wonderful democracy,

00:13:12.980 they're the ones who oppose it.

00:13:14.760 We have a whole lot to say, obviously, about this decision itself.

00:13:18.760 You almost couldn't wish for a better decision,

00:13:22.360 given the political realities that we are living in right now.

00:13:24.880 Just an absolutely magnificent ruling.

00:13:27.920 We have to talk about the politics of this, of course, as well.

00:13:31.360 It's not just about, it's primarily about bioethics

00:13:33.860 and these babies that are now going to live because of the courage of these justices.

00:13:37.960 And, frankly, the courage of Mitch McConnell and the courage of Donald Trump

00:13:41.280 and the political ability of them to get all of this through

00:13:43.940 and the courage of people to vote for these guys and stand up

00:13:46.380 and really fight back in our political order.

00:13:49.920 That's the most important thing.

00:13:52.380 Then there's, of course, the legal question, the constitutional question.

00:13:55.360 Then there's a political question.

00:13:57.020 What does this mean?

00:13:58.160 We are in an election year right now.

00:13:59.880 We are in the heat of the midterm elections.

00:14:01.740 What is this historic ruling going to mean for November?

00:14:07.220 Here to help me discuss is the great Molly Hemingway,

00:14:11.180 editor-in-chief of The Federalist, senior journalism fellow at Hillsdale,

00:14:15.940 and a Fox News contributor.

00:14:18.020 Molly, thank you for being here.

00:14:20.300 It is great to be here with you, Michael.

00:14:22.080 It is truly great.

00:14:23.680 This ruling came out when I was on an airplane.

00:14:26.180 I haven't slept probably in a week.

00:14:28.180 I've been on the road doing all sorts of,

00:14:30.060 we'd already put my show out today.

00:14:31.380 I said, I don't care.

00:14:32.820 Get me some coffee, clear the schedule.

00:14:34.860 This might be, well, not might be.

00:14:37.460 This is the greatest day for American politics in my lifetime.

00:14:43.780 It is easily the greatest day for so many people who survived this regime of Roe v. Wade.

00:14:49.840 Most of us were born after it was implemented.

00:14:52.620 You know, that we survived is a wonderful gift, first off.

00:14:56.080 But it also speaks to how much work went into this from so many different people.

00:15:00.700 You know, the conservative judicial movement, the people who decided to focus on electing

00:15:05.880 senators who would approve good nominees, the decision to actually support Donald Trump,

00:15:13.380 which wasn't easy for a lot of people.

00:15:15.020 And the pro-life movement got behind him when he said he would nominate good justices.

00:15:20.420 And he did.

00:15:21.120 And, you know, the people who voted for him.

00:15:23.560 And it's just a major day of vindication.

00:15:26.060 There was a lot of failure leading up to this moment, a lot of failures by Republican presidents.

00:15:30.720 But this finally succeeded this approach.

00:15:34.900 And it's really impressive.

00:15:35.940 And a lot of people that you have to thank for it.

00:15:37.660 There are.

00:15:38.620 And it's especially true of the conservative legal movement.

00:15:40.760 And it's especially true of Trump.

00:15:43.000 Past Republican presidents have always been a mixed bag at best when it comes to the judges.

00:15:49.500 And then in walks Donald Trump. 0.99

00:15:51.260 And everyone says the guy's a big buffoon. 1.00

00:15:53.460 He's a total rube. 1.00

00:15:54.380 He doesn't know anything about politics.

00:15:56.340 There's no way that he's going to give us the sort of victories that we want, especially this one,

00:16:01.000 the kind of holy grail of a constitutional case.

00:16:04.960 And then Trump is three for three.

00:16:08.440 And that's the margin of victory there.

00:16:10.920 Donald Trump, obviously, has already come out and said promises made, promises kept.

00:16:15.480 We did it, guys.

00:16:16.300 Wonderful decision.

00:16:17.840 Molly, how do you think this plays politically in November?

00:16:21.580 Well, it's interesting because even as recently as maybe 12 years ago,

00:16:24.800 this was the type of issue that Democrats would use to really orchestrate a media hysteria campaign.

00:16:32.460 We saw that in what was called the War on Women. 1.00

00:16:35.240 It was an actual Democrat plot to turn Colorado blue and other states.

00:16:41.120 But something has changed in that meantime.

00:16:43.560 One, the country has gotten even more pro-life than it was before.

00:16:47.220 And this decision is, frankly, very moderate.

00:16:49.720 It's not banning abortion, even as much as pro-life people would love for there to be a protection of all human life.

00:16:57.160 It is pretty much where the American people are, which is they generally oppose abortion,

00:17:01.080 but also generally want it legal at some point.

00:17:03.600 And that's what this type of ruling allows.

00:17:06.720 But there's also the failure of the media.

00:17:08.760 They became such propagandists that no longer are they able to run this type of hysteria campaign

00:17:15.280 and propaganda campaign with the same effect.

00:17:18.100 And so Democrats really tried to make this an issue last year in Virginia in the gubernatorial race.

00:17:24.220 It was basically an abortion race that they tried to make it. 0.98

00:17:27.460 And you might remember Glenn Youngkin won despite the Democrats trying to make that the signature issue.

00:17:34.340 So do you have any sense, moving from the politics of the ballot box in November to the politics of the court,

00:17:41.220 why did the chief justice not go all the way here?

00:17:44.300 You had a 6-3 ruling on the Mississippi pro-life law, clear as day, upholding the law.

00:17:49.480 But then Roberts won't go all the way.

00:17:51.720 In Roberts's opinion, he says, look, guys, I'm fine with the pro-life law,

00:17:56.660 but can't we kind of punt this Roe v. Wade issue down the road?

00:18:00.320 Do we really have to deal with this now?

00:18:01.780 And the court says, yes, we do.

00:18:03.320 So it ends up being a 5-4 decision on overruling Roe.

00:18:07.040 What was the argument here?

00:18:08.060 If the argument was to uphold the integrity of the court, wouldn't a 6-3 decision do much more good for the integrity of the court

00:18:15.900 than this kind of confusing breakdown we have now?

00:18:19.260 So I first want to mention that I wrote with Kerry Severino a book on the Kavanaugh confirmation.

00:18:24.540 An excellent book on the Kavanaugh confirmation.

00:18:27.820 Thank you.

00:18:28.200 And it kind of gets into some of these discussions about what Roberts was doing and how he's ruled in different cases.

00:18:35.140 I don't think he makes a lot of sense here.

00:18:39.000 I mean, one of the things that's interesting about Alito's opinion here or decision today,

00:18:43.660 he talks about how they tried to rescue Roe, which everyone agrees was just like the worst legal decision in the history of the court,

00:18:50.840 by sort of rewriting it in Casey.

00:18:53.820 And they thought that maybe it would make it so that it wouldn't be such a contentious issue.

00:18:58.040 And, of course, all that happened was their new standards of how to handle abortion jurisprudence just led to even more cases and more confusion.

00:19:06.260 And so Roberts today says, oh, he's fine with the Dobbs.

00:19:08.760 He's fine with Dobbs.

00:19:09.580 He's fine with the state limiting abortion in Mississippi.

00:19:13.080 He just doesn't want to get rid of Roe or like this idea that you could somehow come up with some new test that would make the court into this legislature.

00:19:21.880 And it just doesn't really make sense.

00:19:23.760 It doesn't make sense.

00:19:24.840 Unfortunately for Roberts, unfortunately for the liberals, fortunately for justice and the American jurisprudential tradition and the Constitution and the babies, it doesn't make sense.

00:19:38.620 And those cases collapsed under the weight of their own incoherence and because of the courage of these conservatives.

00:19:43.640 Molly, thank you so much for being here.

00:19:45.060 Molly Hemingway, everyone go follow her.

00:19:46.980 She's so wonderful.

00:19:47.940 I didn't expect it to happen.

00:19:49.960 I've never expected it to happen in my life.

00:19:53.300 I, even after that draft was leaked, the Alito draft that said they would overrule it, I still didn't really believe that it would happen.

00:20:02.820 That's how significant this ruling is.

00:20:07.200 To help me, to help me parse what it all means, to help me make some sense of it, is my friend Ryan T. Anderson,

00:20:13.740 the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and the author of the greatest titled book in the history of publishing,

00:20:24.280 When Harry Became Sally, responding to the transgender moment, as well as a number of other books and publications.

00:20:30.180 Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the show.

00:20:33.240 Thanks for having me.

00:20:34.060 Today's a great day to be an American.

00:20:35.560 Today is a truly great day to be an American.

00:20:39.500 I, I'm on an airplane when the ruling comes out.

00:20:42.900 I immediately download the ruling.

00:20:45.100 It's 213 pages.

00:20:47.060 I say, okay, well, I got a long flight, so let's go through it.

00:20:51.900 The, the conservatives seem a little split here.

00:20:55.220 You've got Roberts saying he's going to uphold the pro-life law, but not go for Roe.

00:21:00.040 You've got Kavanaugh saying he doesn't want the court to really say anything about abortion and just leave this to the legislatures.

00:21:07.140 You've got the majority of the court, the five justices, saying that they're going to overrule Roe and Casey, but this isn't going to affect other cases.

00:21:16.280 And then you've got my man, Clarence Thomas, with a concurring opinion.

00:21:21.260 Telling it like it is.

00:21:21.680 He's, and he's telling it like it is.

00:21:23.980 And, and what, the biggest argument from the liberals, as far as I could tell, is, hey, look, never mind this Roe stuff.

00:21:31.780 We, we love abortion.

00:21:32.980 We want Roe to remain. 0.86

00:21:34.220 But really, the scary part is, they're coming for your condoms.

00:21:38.620 They're coming for your gay rights and marriage and things like that.

00:21:43.020 And the majority of, of the court seems to say, no, that's not true.

00:21:47.540 But then I'm reading the Thomas concurring opinion, and he seems to say, yeah, okay, maybe that's true.

00:21:52.300 What, what's your take?

00:21:53.980 All right.

00:21:54.780 So I think the first thing we should do is we should celebrate that Roe and Casey are no longer the law of the land, right?

00:22:01.380 I mean, Roe and Casey are no longer binding precedent on lower courts, and therefore they're not going to be used to prevent states, and for that matter, the federal government, from enacting laws that protect unborn babies and that protect their mothers from the violence of abortion.

00:22:16.420 I mean, as we're speaking, several states are enforcing their pro-life laws that previously they were prevented from enforcing.

00:22:23.020 And so, you know, you said you never thought you would actually see this day.

00:22:26.220 So, I mean, I think the initial reaction has to be one of, like, praise God, it finally happened.

00:22:30.900 Yeah.

00:22:31.320 49 years too late.

00:22:32.900 I mean, they should have admitted they made a mistake at the first opportunity.

00:22:36.380 It shouldn't have taken this long.

00:22:38.640 But, you know, my thought is one of gratitude to the people who didn't give up, who didn't lose hope.

00:22:44.920 It would have been easy, especially after the disaster of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, for pro-lifers to just be despondent, to despair.

00:22:52.320 And I think a lot of people played the long game.

00:22:55.400 They worked through the system nonviolently.

00:22:58.180 I mean, it's unlike what we're seeing with Jane's Revenge tonight.

00:23:00.520 It's unlike what we've seen with the firebombing of pregnancy resource clinics.

00:23:03.920 People who worked through the process, they won elections, they got presidents to commit to appointing constitutionalists to the bench, and then they brought the case.

00:23:13.440 And they argued the case.

00:23:14.380 And they made the case.

00:23:15.560 And we won.

00:23:16.360 And we should celebrate that.

00:23:17.740 So, I mean, that's my initial reaction.

00:23:18.660 We had five justices say Roe and Casey or no more.

00:23:23.700 Look, Kavanaugh's concurrence is not something I particularly appreciate.

00:23:28.100 I think he should have just not written anything and just signed on to the Alito and period.

00:23:33.660 But, I mean, he seems to be signaling that he has no appetite for the 14th Amendment personhood argument, for example.

00:23:40.940 You know, something that two scholars that I've learned a great deal from, John Finnis at Oxford and Robbie George at Princeton,

00:23:46.840 you know, they make the argument that on the original understanding of the 14th Amendment, no person can be denied equal protection of the law.

00:23:53.380 They're not talking about Peter Singer people.

00:23:55.560 They're talking about flesh and blood human beings.

00:23:57.960 And the entity in the womb is a human being.

00:24:00.460 It's a person.

00:24:01.200 And a state can't deny it equal protection of the law.

00:24:03.560 I mean, that Kavanaugh's signaling that he's not going to entertain that argument.

00:24:08.140 Which means that, you know, for at least the near future, I can't count to five on that argument,

00:24:14.060 which means you and I and our listeners need to persuade our neighbors to get our elected representatives to pass laws protecting people from the violence of abortion.

00:24:23.740 We have to get to work now.

00:24:24.980 The ball's in our court, so to speak.

00:24:26.560 So in a way, you're actually giving me a little more respect for Kavanaugh in a kind of backhanded way, which is Kavanaugh writes in.

00:24:36.600 I had the same reaction you did.

00:24:37.860 I thought, why is he even writing this? 0.99

00:24:39.260 This is so this is so silly. 0.93

00:24:41.180 But, oh, he's writing it to signal.

00:24:43.100 Don't bring this case.

00:24:44.780 Don't bring the 14th Amendment, Robbie George, John Finnis personhood case.

00:24:48.500 It's not going anywhere.

00:24:51.200 At least not right now.

00:24:52.780 I mean, so, you know, I don't my guess would be that Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch might be more open to that than not.

00:25:04.200 I don't know where Barrett would come down.

00:25:06.500 The chief and Kavanaugh would probably not have an appetite for it.

00:25:10.140 But that means it's something that as we're vetting justice nominees for the next conservative presidential administration, this can be one of the things that we're looking for.

00:25:18.860 You know, who who filed amicus briefs, who who's embraced the legal theories that we're going to want to see vindicated.

00:25:25.280 But in the meantime, at the very least, Section five of the 14th Amendment says Congress has the authority to enact legislation to protect the rights that the other sections of the 14th Amendment articulate.

00:25:39.760 So there's a role for the federal government, for Congress to pass laws protecting babies.

00:25:43.980 There's a role for all 50 states and that's where the more immediate protections are going to come from.

00:25:50.840 So, you know, you're now what in Tennessee, I guess.

00:25:52.780 You need to be working to see your state enact pro-life laws.

00:25:56.420 I'm in Virginia.

00:25:57.560 Our governor, Governor Youngkin, announced today that he's in favor of a 15 week law.

00:26:02.080 That's not good enough, but it's better than what we currently have.

00:26:05.020 Right.

00:26:05.060 I mean, 15 weeks just gets us to where Europe is.

00:26:07.360 I mean, to give you an idea, like it's not even the Mississippi law was a 15 week law and it's like, I think, 42 out of the 47 European nations have laws at least that protective, if not more protective.

00:26:18.260 So there's a lot of work to be done.

00:26:20.100 This is something that Americans, even American conservatives, I think, fail to appreciate the radicalism and the barbarity of the American abortion regime. 0.90

00:26:30.060 The Mississippi law puts us on par with France.

00:26:34.880 France, these are people that chop off the heads of their own citizens and decapitate kings and queens. 0.78

00:26:41.220 They're the people who invented the term left in political discourse.

00:26:45.320 And they look at Americans and they say, oh my gosh, what are you doing to these babies?

00:26:49.380 So obviously there's a lot of work to be done.

00:26:52.240 What did you make of the Clarence Thomas concurrence?

00:26:55.780 I think Thomas and back when Scalia was on the bench, they would frequently be writing dissents to educate the next generation and to educate law students.

00:27:07.640 They thought they were in the truth telling business.

00:27:09.920 And even though they kept being outvoted because at the time they didn't have enough colleagues who were right thinking, they were going to tell the truth in their dissents to educate that next generation of law student who is now on the court.

00:27:21.900 Maybe Coney Barrett, you know, clerked for Scalia, came of age reading the Scalia dissents.

00:27:26.880 Now she's part of the majority.

00:27:28.840 And I think Thomas is doing something similar with now his concurrences, right?

00:27:32.820 This, you know, in a different era, he would have been writing that opinion as a dissent.

00:27:36.920 Today he's writing it as a concurrence because he agrees with the bottom line.

00:27:40.000 We're overturning Roe.

00:27:40.880 We're overturning Casey.

00:27:41.780 He's also pointing out that the way that we did this was by operating within the framework of existing kind of 14th Amendment jurisprudence on so-called substantive due process.

00:27:51.740 He points out that's an oxymoronic term.

00:27:54.280 Due process is a process.

00:27:56.240 Substantive protections are substantives.

00:27:58.180 There's not a substantive due process.

00:28:00.360 The court just made stuff up.

00:28:03.320 Alito did what he had to do to get five votes, right?

00:28:06.080 And so, you know, Thomas didn't get anyone to join his concurrence, which, you know, shows you, you know, where people are on the court right now.

00:28:13.760 Alito wrote what he had to write in order to get five votes.

00:28:18.220 And I think that's, you know, working within settled kind of, for the moment, jurisprudence to get to the right outcome.

00:28:25.180 That's what you have to do to be prudent, to be a statesman.

00:28:27.460 And we should share that.

00:28:28.600 They were intimidated.

00:28:30.480 Kavanaugh had a death threat of, you know, an active assassination attempt.

00:28:34.320 They could have caved.

00:28:36.220 Roberts couldn't get anyone to join him in his middle position, right?

00:28:40.280 Roberts didn't concur.

00:28:42.300 He occurred in the, in the, concurred in the judgment, but not actually in the opinion.

00:28:48.280 You might say, Ryan, that he tried to split the baby.

00:28:52.040 I'll see myself out.

00:28:53.260 Yeah, yeah.

00:28:55.020 Yes, you're the host, so I can't, you know, come out with the hook and get rid of you.

00:28:58.740 But yeah, I mean, he wanted to say, let's just uphold the Mississippi law, but not overturn Roe and Casey.

00:29:05.280 And, you know, what, what the majority points out in the response to that is that this means that next year we'll be back with another case.

00:29:10.520 Because if we're going to have a 10-week case or an eight-week case or Texas's six-week case, like, why not just once and for all admit we got it wrong than doing this piecemeal?

00:29:19.800 So, so I, I don't see any, um, prudence in what Roberts wrote as his, um, concurring in the judgment opinion.

00:29:27.700 Um, it did leave me scratching my head.

00:29:30.240 It did leave me, because I, I felt it wasn't persuasive.

00:29:33.140 It didn't make a lot of sense.

00:29:34.240 And I felt it didn't even do that thing that Roberts is always so concerned with doing, which is protecting the integrity and stability of the court.

00:29:42.380 I thought really, in, in many ways, uh, leaving the overruling of Roe as a 5-4 decision, it kind of undercut that.

00:29:49.220 So, I, I don't really know what he was thinking.

00:29:50.960 I share your bemusement at, at his, uh, opinion.

00:29:54.180 What do you make of the, the liberals?

00:29:56.500 I, I tried to read the liberals' dissent as charitably as I could.

00:30:01.480 And I, I thought it was embarrassing, particularly compared to Alito's opinion of the court and Thomas's concurrence. 0.72

00:30:09.220 I thought it was, it was just frivolous and a sort of silly dissent. 0.75

00:30:14.180 I mean, you, you would call it sophomoric, but I think that would be an insult to sophomores.

00:30:19.220 I mean, this is, this is like literally, um, we're just going to repeat a bunch of mantras that, you know, liberal jurists have been telling ourselves for 50 years without actually addressing any of the counterarguments that the other side has been advancing.

00:30:32.760 Uh, and so anyone who knows, um, uh, anything about this area of the law, anyone who's read Alito's opinion, and then you read the dissent and you're like, we're just living in different universes.

00:30:42.600 You're not actually talking about the constitution.

00:30:44.780 You're just keeping, you keep citing other court rulings.

00:30:48.300 Then that's justification for this.

00:30:50.320 You know, so this bad court ruling plus that bad court ruling plus that bad court ruling justifies this other bad court ruling.

00:30:57.680 Um, and then nowhere do they wrestle with the question of, you know, what's the competing interest here?

00:31:03.440 They talk about women, female autonomy.

00:31:05.460 They talk about liberty.

00:31:06.840 They talk about privacy.

00:31:08.240 What value does the child who is killed has, right?

00:31:12.640 What value, I mean, what value are you assigning there?

00:31:16.320 And how do you think it is that you as judges or the constitution as a document settles that balancing?

00:31:22.160 Um, and this is Kavanaugh's point where he says, I, look, I just think the constitution is silent on this.

00:31:27.640 I mean, that's a more respectable position than, uh, the argument of the three dissenters where it's just that, you know, these vague notions of, um, privacy and autonomy, uh, somehow justify lethal violence in the womb.

00:31:41.480 I can't help but notice that, uh, Joe Biden, the, the currently sitting president, I'll tell you, maybe he's been a crypto conservative all along.

00:31:51.520 His Catholicism is coming out wittingly or unwittingly as sort of a providential that the second Catholic president manages to preside over the overruling of Roe v. Wade, although he was fighting against a tooth and nail.

00:32:03.260 But because Joe Biden doesn't really believe in anything and he just kind of blows, blows with the political winds in 1982, Joe Biden proposed a constitutional amendment that would have done exactly what this court ruling today did.

00:32:17.900 And, and yet now he comes out against the ruling.

00:32:20.700 How does one make sense of that?

00:32:22.040 Um, political opportunism, um, that people have, you know, put their eternal soul at risk for the sake of winning an election, which is just really sad.

00:32:35.180 I mean, I, I think, you know, in the book that Alexandra and I have coming out on abortion, we have a chapter on how abortions corrupted our political parties.

00:32:44.280 And we just go through kind of chapter and verse, all of these pro-life Democrats, who, as they grew in office, discovered they were more willing to be an elected Democrat than being pro-life.

00:32:55.880 Um, Catholic Democrats used to be a thing.

00:32:58.700 Pro-life Democrats used to be a thing.

00:33:00.360 Now they're endangered species.

00:33:02.180 And you, you have to ask yourself, like, for what?

00:33:05.640 Especially as some of these elected officials are nearing the end of life.

00:33:09.100 Um, you know, you pray that they have a deathbed conversion because it's, um, it's just, when you ask, you know, how do you make sense of it?

00:33:17.020 Um, it's just really tragic.

00:33:18.880 It is, it's tragic. 0.99

00:33:20.420 Kind of pathetic. 0.99

00:33:21.020 It's tragic for the political process and, and tragic for them. 0.99

00:33:24.100 You think what you, so you've, you've thrown away your principles, you, your beliefs, hundreds of thousands of babies per year, upwards of a million and possibly your souls.

00:33:32.860 For what?

00:33:33.860 For what?

00:33:34.300 For what?

00:33:34.700 Especially now when you have, there's such a major victory for life.

00:33:38.820 Ryan, uh, have to leave it there.

00:33:40.740 Everyone go find Ryan T. Anderson all over the interwebs and the social medias.

00:33:46.100 Uh, Ryan, thank you so much for coming on.

00:33:48.200 Sure thing.

00:33:48.600 Thank you.

00:33:49.420 Remember that date, June 24th, 2022.

00:33:54.120 Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization already etched in history.

00:34:00.360 Already.

00:34:00.760 We can know this already today that this will be regarded as one of the most important decisions in the history of the United States.

00:34:08.820 Supreme Court.

00:34:10.200 And I think it's really important to thank two people.

00:34:15.200 We should thank many, many people.

00:34:17.100 I mean, there are, there are too many people to name.

00:34:19.820 All of the activists who have worked tirelessly, often behind the scenes, for years in the pro-life movement, who have not been discouraged, starting in 1973, with the huge gut punch of Planned Parenthood v. Casey in the early 90s.

00:34:35.720 And on and on and on and on, they've continued to work tirelessly.

00:34:40.540 Obviously, the courage of the justices.

00:34:42.820 These are justices who, at this very moment, are having their lives threatened by wackos and lunatics and left-wing political activists. 0.87

00:34:51.860 But I repeat myself, there are people passing out palm cards right now with the personal home addresses of the conservative judges.

00:34:59.420 This is really dangerous.

00:35:01.380 Someone tried to assassinate Rhett Kavanaugh.

00:35:03.800 I know that disappeared from the news.

00:35:06.320 And so you probably haven't heard about that if you've been listening to shows other than this one and a handful of other conservative shows.

00:35:12.560 But there have been threats against Alito, against Amy Barrett, against Kavanaugh and the rest of them.

00:35:19.420 But the two people that we really have to thank are Mitch McConnell.

00:35:24.660 Why Mitch McConnell?

00:35:25.600 Is Mitch McConnell the most personally pro-life man in America?

00:35:28.500 I don't know.

00:35:29.180 I always sort of doubted it.

00:35:30.340 I don't know what his personal views are all that much, but I do know he held that seat open.

00:35:36.260 When Scalia died at the end of the Obama administration, Mitch McConnell held firm, held that seat open.

00:35:43.620 Had he not held that seat open, we would not have this ruling today.

00:35:48.760 It's a 5-4 ruling.

00:35:49.920 6-3 to uphold the Mississippi law, but it's 5-4 to overrule Roe v. Wade.

00:35:53.960 5-4 to save hundreds of thousands of babies per year.

00:35:57.680 100s of thousands of babies per year will be saved immediately as a direct result of this ruling, okay?

00:36:06.000 Mitch McConnell deserves a lot of credit for that.

00:36:08.660 And then, of course, Donald Trump.

00:36:11.780 Donald Trump, you can't give him too much credit for this.

00:36:17.420 You can't over-credit him for this.

00:36:19.660 This guy, because if McConnell had held the seat and then Trump had lost, it wouldn't matter.

00:36:25.600 If McConnell held the seat and Trump had gone squishy on the judges, it wouldn't matter.

00:36:31.780 But McConnell held the seat.

00:36:34.160 Trump did what he said he would do.

00:36:36.180 He made a promise to appoint a conservative constitutionalist judge vetted by the conservative legal movement from that shortlist that he had announced.

00:36:45.640 And he followed through with that.

00:36:47.340 And it worked out.

00:36:48.460 And it gave us this major victory.

00:36:49.960 And the guy deserves so much credit.

00:36:53.500 Whatever you think about Donald Trump, I really like the guy.

00:36:56.220 I know some people don't like him.

00:36:57.420 He's a polarizing figure.

00:36:58.680 And they don't like the way he tweets sometimes.

00:37:00.520 And they don't like some of the things he did in office.

00:37:02.580 Sure.

00:37:03.720 With this ruling, Donald Trump has become, no matter what else he did in his presidency,

00:37:09.680 he has become one of the greatest and most significant presidents in American history.

00:37:15.960 That's done.

00:37:18.020 That's just, that's over now.

00:37:20.760 His name is etched in the history books as one of the greatest presidents because of the importance of this ruling.

00:37:29.560 Today, there were children scheduled to die in Louisiana, in Kentucky, in Texas, in Missouri, elsewhere as well.

00:37:42.180 Now, liberal journalists are tweeting this out, pulling their hair out of their head.

00:37:48.060 They say, oh no, now abortion is legal, is illegal rather, in these states.

00:37:53.280 What does that mean?

00:37:55.300 What that means is that a year from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now,

00:38:01.840 there are going to be people walking around this country who are alive

00:38:06.160 because their mother was scheduled to go in to an abortion mill today, June 24th, 2022. 0.94

00:38:15.100 And those kids were scheduled to be killed.

00:38:18.400 And because of this decision, they were not killed.

00:38:22.000 And in some cases, maybe mothers will go elsewhere to have the abortions. 1.00

00:38:28.100 But in a lot of cases, they won't.

00:38:29.940 They'll just have the babies. 0.99

00:38:32.060 You've actually already seen this happen.

00:38:35.120 The Washington Post ran a big article on this.

00:38:37.840 A young, young lady who found out she was pregnant,

00:38:41.140 but then it was right before an abortion ban went into effect. 0.83

00:38:44.340 And it was too late.

00:38:45.460 And the girl gave birth to these twins.

00:38:49.460 And the article, I guess, was supposed to be upset about this.

00:38:53.860 I guess it was supposed to tug on our heartstrings 0.98

00:38:55.480 and make us think that it would be better if she had killed the babies. 1.00

00:38:59.400 But I'm not so sure. 0.92

00:39:00.480 Maybe there was a secret conservative, a secret pro-lifer at the Washington Post

00:39:03.720 because it showed a picture of the babies.

00:39:05.760 And at the very end, the young lady said,

00:39:09.140 oh, now seeing my babies, loving my babies,

00:39:12.180 oh my gosh, they're the greatest thing in the world. 0.97

00:39:14.080 Could you imagine it'd be so terrible if I had killed them through abortion? 0.80

00:39:17.520 Those babies are alive because of that law. 1.00

00:39:19.900 There will be lots and lots of human beings,

00:39:22.320 people that you meet, people that you work with,

00:39:24.040 people that run for office, people in this country

00:39:27.040 who are alive because this happened on this day.

00:39:31.960 850,000 some odd babies are killed every year through abortion.

00:39:35.420 This decision, unfortunately, doesn't outlaw abortion nationwide,

00:39:38.780 but it is going to deal a huge blow to the abortion regime in America. 0.99

00:39:45.480 And hundreds of thousands of babies per year will live because of this decision.

00:39:52.820 It's astounding.

00:39:55.620 It's certainly astounding enough that it would make me want to go out and do a second show today.

00:40:01.600 And it makes me want to celebrate even more.

00:40:03.420 And I think we should all celebrate.

00:40:05.860 We should give thanks to God and we should pray.

00:40:08.180 We should hug our loved ones.

00:40:10.200 We should really have a moment of gratitude and joy.

00:40:13.640 Our country got a lot better today.

00:40:16.380 I'm Michael Knowles.

00:40:17.500 This is the Michael Knowles Show.

00:40:18.340 The Michael Knowles Show.

00:40:34.380 The Michael Knowles Show.

00:40:36.420 This Michael Knowles Show.

00:40:36.760 This Michael Knowles Show.

00:40:40.040 The Michael Knowles Show.

00:40:42.560 This Michael Knowles Show.

00:40:43.820 The Michael Knowles Show.

00:40:44.420 The Michael Knowles Show.

00:40:45.240 The Michael Knowles Show.

00:40:45.940 The Michael Knowles Show.

The Michael Knowles Show - June 25, 2022

Ep. 1034 - Goodbye, Roe! [Bonus Hour]

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