Morning Wire - Special: SCOTUS Overturns Roe v Wade | 6.24.22

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

A new era for abortion law has begun in the United States. In a monumental decision that overturns 40 years of federal abortion law, the Supreme Court has reversed Roe v. Wade. This is a Special Breaking News Episode of Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A new era for abortion law has begun in the United States. In a monumental decision that overturns 40 years of federal abortion law, the Supreme Court has reversed Roe v. Wade, ruling that the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. The ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health does not outlaw abortion, but returns abortion law to the state level, allowing the people and their elected representatives to decide on the laws. I'm Daily Wire editor-in-chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.

It's Friday, June 24th, and this is a special edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss the landmark ruling by the Supreme Court is Daily Wire's Megan Basham. So, Megan, first, break down the ruling for us. This is a total overturning of Roe, correct? Yes, that is correct. So this was a 6-3 decision. Justice's Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney-Barritt, Brett Kavanaugh, and Chief Justice John Roberts were in the majority reversing the previous road.

decision that granted the quote-unquote right to abortion. So justices Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Stephen Breyer were in the minority. Now, Alito, as expected, based on that draft that leaked in early May, wrote this opinion. And he said that Roe sparked a national controversy that has embittered our political culture for a half century. We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion and no such right is. is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision. He also said, like the infamous decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, Roe was also egregiously wrong and on a collision course with the Constitution from the day it was decided.

Now, in the dissent, Kagan, Breyer, and Sotomayor jointly wrote that the majority's decision says that from the very moment of fertilization, a woman has no rights to speak of. A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term even at the steepest personal and familial costs. Now, they continued with some pretty stark language, so I'm just going to quote this verbatim, if you'll hang with me for a second. With sorrow for this court, but more for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection, we dissent. As of today, this court holds a state can always force a woman to give birth prohibiting even the earliest abortions. A state can thus transform what, when freely undertaken, is a wonder into what, when forced,

may be a nightmare. Now, as we noted, Chief Justice John Roberts joined the majority, but he split a little bit from what the rest of the conservatives decided. In a separate concurrence, he makes it clear that he would have preferred a much more incremental ruling that would have upheld Mississippi's 15-week restriction on abortion, but in a more narrow way that would have left row in place. Here's what Heritage Foundation's senior legal fellow, Sarah Perry, had to tell us about that Roberts concurrence. agrees that the bright line viability rule, in other words, that a woman can terminate her pregnancy up and to the point that a fetus is viable should be discarded. But he says that the ultimate outcome is ultimately too dramatic and consequential, and that they went far beyond

what Mississippi had originally asked, which was not to necessarily overrule Rovers as Wade, or that it had to take such an extreme position. Now, Justice Thomas also wrote a concurrence that's likely to spark some raised eyebrows. Tell us about that. That's right. He did. So in that majority opinion, Alito was clear that this ruling should only apply to Roe, not to other SCOTUS decisions based on that right to privacy found in the 14th Amendment. Well, Thomas disagreed with that. He wrote that the court should reconsider other decisions based on similar reasoning to Roe. And he specifically cited cases that provide a right to contraception,

homosexual sex and same-sex marriage. All of those rest on that right to privacy. So I think we can expect to see activists raising the alarm about these other issues as well. Now, Megan, we've discussed this before, but as we can see from the protests outside the court, there's a lot of fear around overturning of row. What happens now? Yes. And contrary to some popular conception, this ruling does not outlaw abortion. What the decision does is send it back to the states. We can't say that enough. So in 14 states with trigger laws or bans that are already on the books, states like Utah, Arkansas, Tennessee, while there abortion will be immediately banned or at least significantly limited. But other states like California and Colorado have taken steps to make sure that abortion is legal

in some form through all nine months. And legislators in other states like Oregon are saying that they're looking at setting up something called reproductive justice funds that will help women travel to their states for abortion. A few companies are already out today saying the same. Disney, for example, sent out an email this morning promising employees that it is committed to, quote, removing barriers to reproductive care and will pay for travel to access abortion. Now, let's get some reactions in D.C. How have Republicans and Democrats reacted? Well, Republicans, as you might expect, are in a pretty celebratory mood. This was New York Congresswoman Elise Stefani. House Republicans are incredibly grateful for the pro-life movement's tireless efforts for decades leading to this day

to give a voice to the voiceless and protect our most vulnerable, unborn babies. Democrats, on the other hand, are very unhappy and are promising this decision will turn out pro-choice voters to the polls. So this was House leader Nancy Pelosi speaking on Friday. Today, the Republican-controlled Supreme Court has achieved their dark, extreme goal of Ripley-Way, right to make their own reproductive health decisions. In the Congress, be aware of this. The Republicans are plotting a nationwide abortion ban. They cannot be allowed to have a majority in the Congress to do that.

This is deadly serious. But we are not going to let this pass. A woman's right to choose, reproductive freedom is on the ballot in November. All right, Megan, thanks so much for reporting. Absolutely. It's quite the historic day we're witnessing. I want to pivot now to the scene at the Supreme Court. Our reporter Mary Margaret Olahan has been outside the courthouse since this morning. Mary Margaret, what's the atmosphere been like there?

Hey, Georgia, great to be here. So I got to the Supreme Court at 9 a.m. We were all anticipating a ruling, all these protesters gathered, media gathered, but we didn't know for sure whether it was coming today. And we've been at the court every decision day for weeks now. So we weren't quite sure. But sure enough, at 10 a.m., decision dropped, and we knew because the pro-life protesters began just screaming for joy. They were so excited. And then the pro-abortion protesters were kind of

silent for a moment. They're always on the left side of the court. And then as they realized what had happened, they all started chanting. They started saying that the ruling was illegitimate. Meanwhile, the pro-life protesters were really excited. They were reacting. And as the next few hours progressed, the streets started filling up and more police started showing up. We even saw some police and riot gear. I looked around for them later in the day and I didn't see them, so they may have left. But a lot of the roads are shut down, a lot of police presence there, and the streets are completely filled with protesters outside the court right now. Now, there's been a lot of concerns about the protests turning violent. At least one organization has promised to do so. Tell us about that.

So yes, Jane's Revenge, a pro-abortion group that has taken responsibility for a ton of the attacks that have taken place against pro-life centers and clinics and organizations around the country, that group has called for protesting that the night that Roe is overturned. And their language is very, very concerning. They talk about how it's open season on pro-lifers and they want people to be out in the streets protesting. So tonight there will be more protests and we'll be down in streets. Daily Wire will be covering and we can bring you more updates from there. All right.

Well, a historic ruling and potentially a lot of political fallout. Mary Margaret, thanks for reporting. That was Daily Wire, D.C. correspondent, Mary Margaret O'Lahan. And earlier, we spoke to Daily Wire Culture Reporter, Megan Basham. Thanks for tuning in to this special episode of Morning Wire. We'll be back tomorrow with our regular episode.