The Megyn Kelly Show - Roe Overturned - Political, Legal, and Personal Implications, with Charles Cooke, Alan Dershowitz, Lila Rose, and Batya Ungar-Sargon | Ep. 345

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Megyn Kelly takes a deep dive into the Dobbs ruling on abortion and the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade. She begins with a monologue on why the Supreme Court made the right legal decision in the case to send abortion back to the states, and the fight ahead on the issue. Then, Charles C.W. Cooke, National Review senior writer, Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, Lila Rose, founder of "Live Action," and Batya Ungar-Sargon, author of "Bad News," to talk about the political fallout on the Roe and Dobbs decisions, what may happen state-by-state, the "practical politics" of abortion, the legal implications and what may come next, the nuances to the discussion, the over-the-top hysterical media reaction, the left suddenly turning on institutions, the value of consensus and compromise, the truth about Americans' feelings on abortion, the deeply personal response on both sides to the issue, and more.Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social platforms: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/MegynKellyTwitter: http://Twitter.com/MegynKellyShowInstagram: http://Instagram.com/MegynKellyShowFacebook: http://Facebook.com/MegynKellyShow Find out more information at: https://www.devilmaycaremedia.com/megynkellyshow

Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, your home for open, honest, and provocative conversations. Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show. We are back, back from vacation with a big show for you today. We have packed our lineup full of important voices to hear on all angles of the historic decision by the Supreme Court to overturn Roe versus Wade nearly 50 years in the making. And this morning, we just got another major ruling in a six to three decision. The court ruled that a high school football coach who you met on this program had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team's games. You may remember that we interviewed Coach Joseph Kennedy on this show. So it's a case we know well. We'll tackle what that means for the country, but it's definitely a victory

for religious liberty. The guy wasn't trying to make the students pray. He was just trying to offer a prayer himself. And when the students wanted to come join him, he didn't tell them, get out, get away. But that's how crazy our religious liberty jurisprudence has gotten that these sort of far left people who misunderstand the Constitution believe that's unconstitutional. This court set it straight today and ruled for the football coach who was fired over this, who's fired over it. All right, so that's that. But we've got to begin with the seismic ruling in Dobbs. Roe versus Wade is overturned. And so is the 1992 decision upholding it, Casey versus Planned Parenthood. And that is a good thing.

The decisions were an embarrassment. They were a legal invention driven by ideological courts bent on finding constitutional rights that did not exist. It was judicial activism which misled the country for nearly 50 years into believing that the court had powers it didn't

and that women had constitutional rights they didn't. That was wrong. To the extent women are feeling like the rug has been pulled out from under them today, that is the fault of the Roe and the Casey courts, not of this court. Abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution. The challenge all along has been to figure out whether it is nonetheless an implicit right, as the court has reluctantly

from time to time recognized implicit fundamental rights, even though they're not specifically spelled out in the Constitution. That's happened. Roe found the abortion right was such a right rooted in an alleged constitutional right to privacy, which also is not mentioned in the Constitution. And then Casey, 20 years later, switched the rationale, presumably understanding that they were on shaky ground when dealing with the right to privacy, saying abortion rights actually derive from the 14th Amendment's due process clause, which provides that no person may be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law. Now, for part of our country's history, the due process clause

was thought to simply be about process. It guaranteed that, for example, the state could deprive someone of their liberty or even their life, but would have to afford them due process first. Then the court started recognizing something known today as substantive due process, which the late Justice Scalia and now Justice Thomas called a contradiction in terms. If it's about process, it's about affording somebody process, not new substantive rights. In any event, substantive due process liberty rights is where Casey in 1992 found the right to an abortion. The majority in Dobbs, the case decided on Friday, held this reasoning was, quote, egregiously wrong from the start.

That, among other things, implicit constitutional rights must be deeply rooted in our history and our tradition. That's a quote. And that abortion never was never. When the 14th Amendment was adopted, three quarters of the states had outlawed abortion at any stage of pregnancy. OK, three quarters. Even by the time that Roe was decided in 1973, 30 states still banned abortion altogether. The notion that abortion was a right had not been recognized by any court, state or federal, until just a few years before Roe. So no, this was not a right deeply rooted in our history and our tradition. No matter to the courts in Roe and Casey, which decided they knew better. Just as the country was beginning to evolve politically on the issue of

abortion, the Roe and Casey courts stepped in and short-circuited the political process. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg later acknowledged that fact. Worse yet, the Casey court, swimming in hubris, called on both sides to, quote, end their national division by treating the court's decision as the final settlement. Really? Not surprisingly, no one listened. And the debate has raged on for some 50 years since Roe. Even now, 26 states petitioned this court to overturn Roe and Casey. Nothing has healed. No divisions have ended. Because this is a matter for the people to decide, not nine unelected people in robes, but the citizenry of the states.

And now the matter goes back to where it ought to be, to the citizens of each and every state. Are you angry about abortion rights being stripped away in your state? March, petition, vote, exercise your rights to be heard and have your opinion taken seriously. And if you lose the fight, you may have to consider other options like voting with your feet,

just like we do when other policies convince us that our state does not represent our values anymore. This is the way it ought to work. The Supreme Court was never meant to be a kind of super legislature. It started looking more like one when the liberal belief of a, quote,

living constitution took root. This concept is all over the dissent in Dobbs, which is emotional and distraught and reads very much like a policy prescription you might hear from AOC. As Justice Scalia once observed, if the Supreme Court was meant to see the rights in the Constitution as expanding based on the changing views of equality or liberty or decency, then why did we need the 19th Amendment, which afforded women the right to vote?

Why didn't the High Court just rule that the Due Process Clause mandated this right? Because jurists in this country used to agree that the Constitution governed a few key things and the rest of our rights would be determined by the people. The people in 1920 felt that women's suffrage was so important, it deserved better than a state-by-state evaluation. It deserved to be a part of the Constitution.

That is why they passed a constitutional amendment. And they could do the same now on abortion if they could convince the country to support it, which, by the way, they can't. The support for it is not that wide. could convince the country to support it, which, by the way, they can't. The support for it is not that wide. That's why it's going to remain a state by state issue. That's how a federalist system works. Accountability among our state representatives who make policy decisions every day and who

answer to us at the ballot box, not some sweeping grant of power to nine judges to tell us what's decent in modern day America. One last point. The dissent in Dobbs is not wrong that other decisions based on the alleged privacy right mentioned in a row or substantive due process liberty cited by Casey do not necessarily pass the test outlined by the majority. They're not wrong about that. Was contraception, homosexual sodomy, gay marriage or interracial marriage, quote, deeply rooted in our country's history and tradition, the test to which they subjected the abortion right? No. So are those rights going away, as the dissent and some liberal pundits now claim? Well, the majority explicitly and repeatedly says absolutely not. And that assurance is worth a lot

legally. You just wait to see when somebody tries to challenge one of those cases, that majority language coming back to haunt them. They probably won't even accept those cases, but if they were to, that language in the majority opinion will come back to haunt anybody trying to challenge the right to contraception, etc. Nonetheless, the dissent and liberal pundits remain skeptical. In my view, the majority should be believed for two reasons. One, as the court points out, abortion is in a class of one. None of these other rights involved such a grave clash of interests and unborn child's right to life against a mother's right to control her own body. And where cases can be easily distinguished from one another,

the tossing of one is far less likely to lead to the tossing of the other. Second, each of these decisions is entitled to its own stare decisis, or respect, as a precedent of the high court. The court, in applying that stare decisis test to Roe and Casey did not find them worthy of deference for a whole host of reasons. But the majority points out that each of these other decisions on contraception, interracial marriage, gay marriage and so on would get its own stare decisis analysis. And the factors that led to the rejection of Roe and Casey, including how unworkable they proved to be, the line of viability, the three trimester system that Roe imposed based on nothing and so on, how egregiously

baseless they were from the start and the extent to which the public has relied on them would lead to very different conclusions in these other cases involving rights to contraception, interracial unions and gay marriage. All right. So that's-mongering by the people who just don't like today's decision. In sum, there is every reason to believe that these legal precedents will remain safe, as the court has all but guaranteed as much, and there is no legal will to overrule them, save for basically Justice Thomas, who admits in his concurrence that he doesn't really believe in substantive due process rights and would leave all of this to the legislatures. Moreover, unlike abortion rights, there's nothing about these rights to suggest that they've been unworkable or that they even remain genuinely controversial. Who's out

there running around opposing interracial marriage, right, or contraception. Even gay marriage has now got the majority support in this country. Bottom line, Roe and Casey needed to go. As the majority found, they usurped the power to address a question of profound moral and social importance that the Constitution unequivocally leaves for the people. Now the fight will play out where it should, in the political arena. And I have no doubt that both sides are well suited for the battle. Joining me now, Charles C.W. Cook, senior writer at National Review. Charles, what do you make of it? Well, I think that irrespective of one's view on abortion, full disclosure, I'm pro-life, one should be pleased with this decision because the law

is the law. There are Supreme Court decisions that I think are correct, that I wish weren't, and that I think are wrong, but cut against interest. For example, I think a lot of the court's death penalty jurisprudence is just wrong, even though I am personally strongly against the death penalty. And so it is here. Roe, right from the beginning, was an exercise in judicial imperialism. There's nothing wrong with the court interfering in democratic decisions when those decisions contradict the plain text or structure or original public meaning of the constitution. But that was not the case on any count with Roe. And worse than just being wrong, which in my view is in and of itself justification for nixing it, it's corrupted our judicial politics and it's corrupted the court itself. And it had proven

over 49 years that it was unworkable. And eventually I'm glad that a majority said, you know what, this was wrong the day it was decided and we're just not doing it anymore. It's funny to listen to some of the left talk about how extreme these justices are. They're activists, they're extremist activists. When the truth is, that's what Roe and Casey was. That's what those justices did. And the countries had to live with the fallout from their activism for five decades. Now, finally, the court boots this back to where it ought to be in the hands of the people, and they get saddled with that label and judged illegitimate by people like AOC and others. Well, I think it's worth distinguishing Casey

and Roe as well. Roe was the original sin. Roe was the extreme move. Roe was the activism. Roe was the lie. Casey was, in a sense, a cowardly refusal to accept that. Casey didn't really say, oh, this was a good decision. Casey said, in essence, this was a decision. This has a long tradition of existence to borrow from Animal House. That was the Casey holding. And that didn't work either. So it's not as if Casey contained some magisterial review of history and came to the opposite conclusion as the majority in Dobbs. Casey said, well, if when a controversy arises, if the judges lie about it, that has to stay American law forever. Of course, that's not how we should do this.

So it's not really true that this has been upheld and upheld and upheld so much as there was an initial mistake and the court has never been willing to acknowledge it until now. Okay, so now we get to the politics of it, because my own take is this is not great for Republicans going into these midterm elections. They were winning. The news cycle for them was very good and for Joe Biden was very bad. And forget Roe. OK, because people I mean, Dobbs overturning Roe and Casey, people are going to get over the Supreme Court and move on, I think, pretty quickly to what's happening state by state. And that's what's really going to matter. You know, I mean, I think it's 13 states already. Abortion is now illegal thanks to those sort of trigger laws that were in place just in case Roe was ever overturned. And now we're going to see a media rush to cover every woman who can't get an

abortion in her state as though it's the only narrative out there. Well, no coverage of the women who wound up having their babies and are really thankful that they didn't have abortions. Those will not be covered. And certainly, they're not even going to be that many of those between now and the midterms. So politically, how does this play out? Well, I think we have to separate out two elements here. The first one is, while it is true that the press is absolutely ruthlessly pro-choice,

most people respond to the world around them, not what they see on the news, which is why, for example, attempts to cover up, say, high gas prices or inflation just haven't worked. If you go to a store or if you fill up your car, you know what the truth is. And I think that's true with abortion as well. I mean, anyone who didn't want an abortion will be in the same position they were before. But those who do will find out what their state's position is. I bring that up because this moves down the question in many ways from the national level, in that all of that energy is going to be absorbed locally. If you're in California, nothing's going to change. If you're in Nebraska, it probably will. So then the question becomes, well, how many people will care? And that also gets absorbed locally, not in every case,

but most states, I think, will set their laws about where the public is. We've seen already in Virginia, for example, the governor said he about where the public is. We've seen already in Virginia, for example, the governor said he wants to set the abortion restrictions at 15 weeks, which is about where Virginians are. It's actually about where Americans are as well. So then the question becomes, well, are people motivated enough to protest on behalf of other people, that is people who live in different states, are Californians angry enough about potential laws in Alabama or Mississippi to change the way they vote in November? I don't think there'll be a huge number of those people. But I do think there will be some. And I do think that it will motivate some voters to get out if they weren't going to before or even to move from

independent to Democrat, or maybe even in some cases, Republican to Democrat, but I don't see that as a huge issue. So I think at the margins, this will help the Democrats a little bit. But I think the fact that it is going to be absorbed at the state level takes a lot of the sting out of that shift. You've got people like Dave Portnoy out there saying this is crazy. You know, there's no way I would vote for Republicans in the wake of this. I guess we have the soundbite. Take a listen. I just don't get it to take away the ability to make informed decisions on how they want to live their lives is bananas. At what point do you look at the Constitution and say,

hey, this was written by people who had slaves? Maybe not the woke left, the liberals. They're crazy. They're insane people. Yet I end up having to vote for a moron like Biden because the right is going to put Supreme Court people in who are just ruining this country and taking basic rights away. I honestly believe 95% of the people in the country think like me. That's why we have to vote for the morons like Biden, who's borderline incompetent because it's too dangerous to vote Republican. Like, what the fuck are we doing? Wake up.

Everybody thinks that the majority of the country thinks like they do. Everybody's like, I believe 90, 95 at least think exactly the way I do. But what do you make of his point? Not that Dave Portnoy's political prognostications must respond to events, but he may speak for a wide swath of, in particular, young men and women of childbearing age who have to worry about, you know, unwanted pregnancies who feel like they've lost something. I have to say, I watched that last week, was it? And it was one of the more moronic contributions to the debate in both historical constitutional and political terms.

There will be people who feel like that, hopefully for slightly less self-interested reasons than Dave Portnoy's. But again, I think that that is why it's important to remember that the Supreme Court did not say that abortion is legal in the United States. You know, this idea that I keep hearing from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others, that this was somehow an arrogant act, that this was activism, that this undermined democracy is completely backwards. It would have been an arrogant act if there were a constitutional amendment to protect a right to abortion.

But given that there wasn't, it was the opposite of an arrogant act. It was the court saying 50 years ago, we usurped this power. We should not have that power. We are therefore sending it back to the people who enjoy that power at the state level. So we will see this play out 50 times. This isn't a national question anymore, at least not in the same way that it was. Are there enough people who think like Dave Portnoy in states to chafe at the restrictions that will be in some states, but not all put in place? Maybe. I would just filter that though through a couple of observations. First off, even when people have particular views about abortion, they don't tend to rank that high on the list of priorities. Maybe that will change. I'm really not convinced in this economy that it will. Second, the Roe regime, as pushed through Casey, was far more extreme than where most people who are pro-choice are. It led to an abortion norm of about 24 weeks,

which you don't really see in many other places. You certainly don't see in Europe. So whether people will be so- I think there's only six countries in the world allow abortion after 20 weeks. So we're in a list of like North Korea and some other, we're not in a good list. Right. So I can understand if people who think like Dave Portnoy might chafe at say the abortion laws of Missouri. But I think it's unlikely they're going to be too vexed by the abortion laws in Florida, where it's now 15 weeks, or Virginia, if they get their 15-week ban. And that's the bit that gets missed, because the Roe debate has led us into this false dichotomy of zero weeks, or 24, or in practice, more, where actually that's not where most legislatures are going to end up. And it's not where most people are going to end up either. But politically, how does it play out? You're in Florida. DeSantis is, you know,

considered one of, if not the favorite for the GOP nomination. We'll see what Trump does. And so, you know, every debate is going to be, where do you stand on the abortion? 15 weeks. Why isn't it zero? Why are you allowing it up to 15 weeks? This guy over here is to your right, DeSantis. Why aren't you more pro-life, right? Like this is going to come to dominate a lot of the questions and so on. And how do you think somebody like DeSantis handles that? Well, I do agree that it's tricky because if you're DeSantis and you want to be president, then you have to think, first off, how do I get through a primary where one of my opponents says that Florida should have a zero week regime? And then you think, how do I get through a general election where a rival on the Democratic side might say that Florida should have

a 24 week or 30 week or 40 week regime or that Roe should be restored? But again, I think the question is where the average person is. Now, this is not a moral point. Morally, I find it very difficult to say 15 weeks is fine. If you think a life is a life as I do, then really you would want to see no abortions at all. But in practical politics, you can't get there just by drawing moral inferences. You have to convince other people who don't agree with you. You have to work bit by bit. That's been true on an awful lot of questions in American history. And it's true here. And I don't see a particular risk to say

Ron DeSantis or Glenn Youngkin, for that matter, if he runs saying, well, we set it at 15. That's where we thought the people of my state were. Also, remember, by the time Ron DeSantis runs for president for the first time in 50 years, he will be able to say this is no longer a federal question. He will be able to say this is not about judges anymore. This is not about Congress. This is not about the president. This has been returned to the states. And he can say what he did in Florida and then say that the issue of abortion is up to my predecessor and the governors in the other 49. That's the smart answer because you get dragged into, you know, it was used to be easy for most GOP candidates, even Trump, who, you know, I don't know, somebody said one of the

articles I read said he has a complicated history with abortion. Even Trump could run as a pro-life candidate just saying, I don't believe in Roe. You know, it was wrong to decide. And we should I would appoint justices who felt as I do. That's easy. It's it gets a lot trickier when you start to get into, well, entirely outlawed. What about the left keeps saying, you know, that they're going to get rid of any exception, even for the life of the mother. Meanwhile, that's not true. None of the states that have actually even kicked in on their abortion bans would disallow it if it were necessary to save the life of the mother. Now, rape and incest exceptions, that's a different

story. And I do think the media constantly playing up those cases. You've got a young girl. She was the victim of rape. She can't get, you know, incest. You know, she can't get an abortion. That's I've been part of the media long enough to know that's where they will go. And you talk about those suburban Republican women who drifted away from Trump. You know, I'm not saying that there aren't there's not a huge pro-life contingent there. I think some of them are pro-life, but those cases tug at the heartstrings. And just anecdotally, Charles, I'm thinking about one of my friends in Texas. Texas is not exactly a blue state, and she's a very red voter, but she's got four daughters, and she didn't like what Texas did on the six-week thing. And this is the kind of thing that can move more moderate Republican women. I think that's right. And I think that's why pro-lifers ought to recognize that even small changes will be an improvement. And that if they try and move too fast on legislation and on changing the culture, then they may end up losing power at the state

level and seeing worse outcomes than the ones that they wanted. I can't find a good reason as somebody who believes that life begins at conception to exclude, say, rape and incest. I can absolutely see a case for the life of the mother. We're just talking philosophically, a child is a child, however it's conceived. But it will be the first thing I did, if I were in any position of power, is to exempt that. Because that is something that people feel extremely strongly about, and for good reason. Again, I can't really see a case for 15 weeks or 12 weeks. If you think it's a life, then with the exception of the life of the mother, it's a life. But you're just not going to get zero weeks. And if you try,

you're not going to bring people along with you. And you're going to end up alienating too many voters. And you're going to end 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 position of authority, I'm not, I would say, look, we now have the chance to make progress on this. Let's not bite off too much of the loaf. Because, you know, this is the whole point of the anti-Roe movement is that there is no constitutional right that overcomes the will of the people. And therefore, we have to take into account the will of the people. And lots and lots and lots of people profoundly and earnestly disagree with the pro-life side. And they get a voice in this too.

On that front of a life is a life, and, you know, I mean, obviously the entire pro-choice movement is about that, right? That life begins at conception and that while there may be some empathy for what a mother goes through, carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term, that doesn't justify

the snuffing out of that life. You've got some other rationales out there that are worthy of a moment. Hannah Navarro on The View goes out there and this is her justification for why abortion needs to remain a right. Sorry, Debbie, what'd you say? Do we have it? I'm talking to my producer. We're going to get it for one second, but goes out there and talks about why it's it's so important that abortion remain a right available to all women. And this is how she explained the need. Charles, listen. I am not anybody to tell you what you need to do with your life or with your uterus. And because I have a family with a lot of special needs kids, I have a brother who's 57 and has the mental and motor

skills of a one-year-old. And I know what that means financially, emotionally, physically for a family. And I know not all families can do it. And I have a step-granddaughter who was born with Down syndrome. And you know what? It is very difficult in Florida to get services. It is not as easy as it sounds on paper. And I've got another step grandson who is very autistic, who has autism, and it is incredible. And their mothers and people who are in that society or in that community will tell you that they've considered suicide because that's how difficult it is to get help, because that's how lonely they feel, because they can't get other jobs, because they have financial issues, because the care that they're able to give their other children

suffers. Wow. She's on CNN there, not on The View, obviously she's a contributor there. So it's really hard to raise autistic children. And therefore, abortion needs to remain legal on demand. Your thoughts? I mean, there's no other way to interpret what she just said, other than that she thinks those people should be dead. I'm afraid I find that grotesque. My mother's a special needs teacher. I grew up helping her out at work. She taught children with cerebral palsy, with Down syndrome, all across the autistic spectrum, Asperger's. And that's one of the reasons I'm pro-life.

I'm not religious, as you know, is because I think that there is a tendency, sometimes implicit, sometimes in the case of a country such as Iceland, where they talk about having cured Down syndrome, by which they mean having killed everyone who has Down syndrome, explicit to suggest that we need to abort people who are different. And I think this goes to the political question as well, in that I think it would be a good idea and the right thing to do for Republican run states to make clear that they are going to help support women who get pregnant and don't want the child.

Yes. I think that that would be a good public policy. But I will just say this because I hear this a little bit too much. One does not have to support that in order to oppose abortion any more than one has to support, say, the building of new homeless shelters to oppose the killing of the homeless. The core presumption here is that unborn children are alive and that they are worthy of our protection. So while I do support all sorts of programs to help children and to help the mothers who are struggling to care for them, it is not the case that in order to be meaningfully or properly pro-life, one has to sign up with a given welfare agenda or the Democratic Party platform or whatever. The case here is that life is precious and it's worthy of protection. And I wince when I hear what Anna Navarro said there, because I hear her implying that the

people to whom she's referring are somehow second class citizens. And I just do not see them like that. It's absolutely disgusting. I do have it. I have a nephew who's significantly autistic and he's amazing. And it has been challenging for his parents, but they put the work in to try to help him with the issues that he's struggled with. And he's awesome. And the suggestion that a better alternative would have been to abort him because their life would have been easier suggests she has absolutely no understanding of love and how it works and the gift of a child,

challenged or not. Charles, such a pleasure to talk to you. Really look forward to it all weekend because I knew you're coming on and you didn't disappoint. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Coming back with Alan Dershowitz. Looking forward to him too.

He and I are going to get into it. It's going to be fun. California Congresswoman Maxine Waters, a Democrat, has a message for people upset with the high court's decision in Dobbs. Just ignore it. Take a listen. Women are going to control their bodies no matter how they try and stop us. They held with the Supreme Court. We will defy them. Women will be in control of their bodies. And if they think black women are intimidated or afraid, they got another thought coming. OK, so we got to get the race injected there, too. Joining me now, Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus of Harvard Law School and a constitutional scholar. OK is a self-inflicted wound. The Supreme

Court need not have decided whether Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional, as Justice Roberts put it so correctly. The only issue presented in this case, the issue presented on the cert petition, was, is a 15-week limitation as done in the Mississippi statute constitutional. The state of Mississippi said you don't have to decide Roe versus Wade in a certain petition. And the Supreme Court reached out in a case of incredible judicial activism and decided a case not before them. Now, you and I have different views on liberalism, conservatism, but all good conservatives I know believe in judicial restraint and oppose judicial activism, except when it benefits them. How can well, but to be clear, but to be clear, Mississippi's sung a different tune once that once the court granted certiorari.

And once it got before the court started saying you do have to overrule rule one way or the other, you've got to do it. And Justice Roberts, Chief Justice Roberts, said the court now rewards that tactic. He acknowledged that they did a bait and switch and said, now you've rewarded that tactic. They call he called it a gambit. He was absolutely right. The Supreme Court should have just limited itself to that case. What the Supreme Court basically did is said, look, we've decided this case. We've decided the Mississippi case. Now we're going to send you an opinion that we think you ought to follow. We also think that all these state statutes are questionable and that there's no need any longer for any state to recognize any constitutional right. That's pure dictum,

pure judicial overreaching. Now, you know, they could have decided that two years or three years from now, but you don't decide that case now on a record that doesn't require you to decide it. That's judicial activism. And it's just wrong. And I don't agree with that. I can understand Alito's point, which was these cases are coming. There's like several in the pipeline. We could punch from the Mississippi case.

But the issue is coming our way. And by the time the both parties got in front of this court, they were both saying, you've got two choices, overrule Roe and Casey or uphold Roe and Casey. That's what's actually before you. And they they took the big swing. If they didn't take it this time, they were going to take it very soon. In any event, that's that's sort of but that's but that's not even the main issue when they decided it, when when they they were eventually going to get to this. And there's a majority at this point thinking Roe and Casey needed to go right that they needed to go. And now you've got people saying it's so much worse than that.

You got the dissent saying this. You got liberal pundits saying this, saying you like Roe too bad. You like gay marriage too bad. You like interracial marriage too bad. You like contraception too bad. They're all going to go. This is the beginning of a very slippery slope. Is that true in your view? No, it's not, because there's a big difference between what I call crimes, rights with victims and victimless rights. Now, I invented this concept. It hasn't been part

of the law, but there are two kinds of rights, victim rights and victimless rights. Abortion is a victim right. As your previous guest said, a fetus is not an appendix. A fetus is not a gallbladder. It's not just removing a useless organ. It's a potential life. And so we have to balance that life against both the life of the mother and the interests of the mother. It's a very difficult decision, but it's a decision that involves a conflict of rights. Gay rights, there's no conflict. Contraception, there's no conflict. Interracial rights, there's no conflict.

It's nobody's business who you marry. It's nobody's business who you have sex with. It's nobody's business whether you prevent somebody from being born. Nobody has the right to be born. So I would distinguish, and I hope the court will distinguish between rights with victims like abortion rights and rights without victims like the three other privacy rights we've discussed. I think that's a very important distinction. Let me ask you that in its majority opinion. So this is I really been wanting to ask you this question because I agree majority opinion. So this is I really been wanting to ask you this question because I agree with you that the court does. They don't say it like you

just said it, but they definitely say those rights are not going to be touched. Those decisions are not going to be touched. They're not at issue here. Abortion, as I said in the opening, is sort of in a class of one for the reason you just stated. But I have to say the dissent point, right, the dissent was the three liberal jurists, Justice Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan. The dissent's point that the court kind of ignores the privacy, the right to privacy and the privacy jurispr a series of decisions before Roe that Roe was based on. And the majority doesn't really grapple with the fact that none of those decisions, like a decision on contraception, on interracial marriage, on gay marriage, those are not going to meet the test of is this a right firmly established in our in our traditions and our history either, right? There's no history of interracial marriage that could just... So their point, the dissent's point is, if you subject these other cases to the test that the majority just subjected Roe and Casey to, they in a just world will fall too. So they say the majority, they may say one thing, but when those cases actually get here, they're going to have to decide another way if they're if they really mean what they said here.

I agree with you, except I would put it a little differently with the sprinkler to saying is logic be damned, rationale be damned. We're telling you, Ipsy Dixon, we're just telling you we're doing the abortion case. We don't care how logically it requires us also to undo the conception cases and undo the interracial marriage cases. We don't care about logic. We're in charge. We are the Supreme Court.

We're telling you this case is abortion only. It's pure, pure dick-tocked. It has no logic at all. Justice Thomas gets the best of the logic. If you take away the right of privacy, if you say that's an unenumerated right and that we're not going to recognize that, how do you uphold the right of a married couple? I lived in New Haven in the early 1960s, young married couple. I was not allowed to get birth control before Griswold versus Connecticut because the Catholic Church

demanded that all birth control clinics be closed, and they closed all birth control clinics. And so in Griswold, the Supreme Court said privacy. Remember, of course, the word privacy is not in the Constitution. There was no such word in 1793. The word was security. The right of the people to be secure in their persons is a right of privacy. And so I do think that the majority opinion is illogical, that Thomas gets the best of the logical argument. But Americans aren't prepared to undo their right to have birth control. They're not prepared to do the right of a black man to marry a black woman. It's all political. it's nothing to do

with logic. So let's let's spend a minute on Justice Thomas, because he does. I totally agree with what you said. He's against this substantive due process thing. He basically says, you know, if you want that, if you want these rights, go petition your state legislature for them. It's not a constitutional matter. So people say, oh, like he wants his marriage to Ginny Thomas to be undone. She's a white woman. No, it's not that he would just he'd probably be out there petitioning his state to make sure the interracial marriage stayed legal as a state by state matter. But none of those rights is under a push to be undone. You know, like nobody's trying to undo contraception in 2022 or interracial marriage.

Interracial marriage won't be under a push, but gay marriage will be. I don't think that I don't think the a push. I don't think so. The polls show the American people have got behind that. Say it again? The polls show that the American people now favor gay marriage. They weren't there necessarily when Obergefell came down, but they're there now. What they don't favor is abortion at the very end of the pregnancy. I don't favor that either. And but all I mean, about 70 percent, 65 percent of Americans want there to be some right of abortion. They don't favor either extreme. They don't favor stopping abortion in the first couple of weeks. They don't favor banning the morning after bill. And they also don't favor allowing abortion at eight and

a half months. So Americans are in the middle. And if the Supreme Court hadn't decided this case now, maybe those impacts could have been felt. Even Senator Rubio said, I can live with 15 weeks. The only people that couldn't live with 15 weeks are people on both sides of the extreme. 15 weeks would have been a good compromise. The Supreme Court could have done that and denied cert for the next five or six or eight years. But this was an agenda driven decision. You know, this decision could have been written the day that Barrett got nominated. Why did they have to wait for a case? They should have just announced we now have five justices to overrule Roe versus Wade. We hereby overrule Roe versus Wade. It doesn't matter. There's no case before us.

I don't see that as being so different. Well, you're not wrong that the conservatives have been itching to undo this jurisprudence since it was passed. They thought it was absolutely baseless. I mean, I don't think they're wrong about that. No, we disagree. But that doesn't mean you're pro-abortion or anti-abortion. It means you think Roe and Casey were wrongly decided.

But the thing about Thomas is, so he's ideologically consistent. He said the same stuff all along. He said the same stuff here. He's part of the five, four. But he also wrote us six, three. But he also wrote a separate concurrence saying this is what how I would have decided it. And that has led to a lot of people saying, you see, you see, even though the other majority justices are like, we don't agree with him. We're not going to do that. But listen, Alan, to Lori Lightfoot, a Chicago mayor. OK, this is a city. That has had two hundred and eighty two homicides this year alone. OK, this past weekend, weekend, at least five people were killed, including a five month old baby girl. All right. And she is railing not about that, not about the homicides and the death rate, but about Clarence Thomas. Listen to her. If you write Clarence Thomas concurrence, he said, thank you, fuck Clarence Thomas. Fuck you, Clarence Thomas.

He thinks that we are going to stand idly by when they take our rights. This is the same person who said that when she saw the draft opinion, that this was a call to arms against the justices. And we have to apply the same rules to the right and the left. We have to apply the same insurrection nonsense that we've applied to the right, to the left. But listen to my former colleague, Larry Tribe. He says this is the first time in American history that people went to sleep at night with one right and woke up the next morning with their rights gone. He is so wrong. Karamatsu, the case that confined 100,000 Japanese Americans, took away a right. Buck versus Bell took away the right of mentally ill not to be sterilized.

The Alien Sedition Act took away the right to dissent. We've gone through a history of having rights taken away. As Martin Luther King said, you know, the arc of justice moves both ways. In the end, maybe it points to justice. But, you know, you win some, you lose some if you're a liberal. But you don't take to the violence. You don't engage in acts of civil disobedience. This, too, will pass. We will do everything we can to help women get abortions.

Wealthy people will put billions of dollars into helping them be transported to California or New York or other places. And we have to fight back at the polls. This can help the Democrats win the midterm elections. But this is not the end of the world. This can help the Democrats win the midterm elections. But this is not the end of the world. This is not the end of civilized government. This is not the beginning of fascism. People on both sides have overstated the importance of this decision. It's important. It's key. And it's very important to poor women and poor women who have no access to

abortion. But it didn't ban abortions. It sent them back to the states. Now, we who support a woman's right to choose at various times of the pregnancy have to fight back politically and have to win legislative seats and have to turn this around to our advantage. That's what Justice Ginsburg said back in the day when Roe was decided. And she had a point then, and that point is even more important now. Look, three legacies have been decided by this case. Robert's legacy, he's lost control of his court. Ginsburg's legacy, she's been very much appropriately criticized for not leaving the court in time to have her replaced by a more liberal person. And President Trump's

legacy, which has been enhanced, at least on the right, by his appointment in this decision. So this is an important decision politically, as well as in the history of the Supreme Court. But I don't think it was a necessary decision to decide at this point in time. It would have been so much better if they decided 15 weeks. There'd be demonstrations by extremists on both sides who aren't satisfied with 15 weeks and thinks 15 weeks too much, too little. But give us time. Then a year from now, two years from now, three years from now, then you can overrule

Roe versus Wade. It was unnecessary to do it now. Alan Dershowitz, always love hearing your perspective. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you so much. All right. We've got so much more on the decision to overturn Roe and Casey and the media meltdown in the wake of Friday's decision coming up right after this.

Deputy opinion editor of Newsweek and author of Bad News, How Woke Media is Undermining Democracy, Batya Angar Sargon is with us now to respond to the media's flailing reactions over the weekend and to explain why the polarization over Roe versus Wade is a divide of the elite, like so many of the narratives that drive our media cycle. Welcome back, Batya. Great to have you. Thank you so much for having me. That conversation you just had with Alan Dershowitz was incredible and just like an absolute encapsulation of what our media should be like and really isn't like. So kudos to really exposing over this to come on the show. I mean, one of my very good friends is a doctor and OBGYN who performs abortions. She's too distraught to talk like she she is distraught. Another one of my lifelong friends was a nurse at Planned Parenthood who assisted. So like it's not like I have people in my personal

life with whom I speak, but a lot of people don't want to come on and they think that maybe our audience is more right leaning. But there are right leaning people who are pro choice and there are left leaning people who are pro life. That's my mom. My mom's a lifelong Democrat who's pro life or she's a Catholic. Anyway, you just got to expose yourself to the different points of view. Right. And then you're smart enough to make up your own mind. That's something I always trust my audience to do. But the media is not to be trusted with these discussions because they're driven by their own ideology and they don't trust their audience to make up their own mind if exposed to all the different points of view. And that has been reflected in what we've seen so far. I teased it before we did the segment. Here's just one example. This woman is apparently a CNN

legal analyst named Jennifer Rogers. Here's her take on it. This is Sat 13. Listen, it's a heartbreaking betrayal of half of the country. Sorry, I'm getting, you know, watching the women there. It's emotional. It's a real problem. And people are talking about privacy issues. You know, can states who are trying to criminalize abortion, not just to the women getting them, but if doctors providing them, of people driving them to the clinic, are they going to be able to search your apps? You know, there's apps that track menstrual cycles. You know, how far are these states going to try to go in criminalizing every single aspect of women trying to control their reproductive rights? So Jennifer is apparently insane in addition to being distraught.

Literally nobody who knows anything about how this is going to work would suggest that they're going to punish you for a period tracking app. Yeah, I was wondering, was she trying to make an argument about privacy there, about big tech surveillance, the government tapping into that? It didn't really make a lot of sense. You know, I have felt myself sort of having, I think, a similar reaction to you seeing the level of hysteria and emotion around this. But at the same time, I also find myself sort of feeling like, you know, every day we as Americans have the opportunity to choose to be like a little bit more kind, you know,

even in these moments when like life and death is at stake and, you know, on both sides, I think, see it that way. And so I'm trying very hard to sort of get into the mindset where you would start to really cry over this. And, you know, it's so interesting, Megan, I don't know if you've noticed this, but when you look at who goes to these abortion protests, you know, it's often people who just, they don't seem like they're the kind of people who would ever really need one. You have people holding up signs being like, you know, this endangers black women. But, you know, most of the women at these protests are often white women. They look, you know, like from a certain, you know, demographic. Yeah, it's all Upper West Side, Lululemon wearing liberals.

Yeah, I think that that's a yeah, it's a really interesting piece of this puzzle about, you know, trying to understand and get to the bottom of where these emotions are coming from. Well, you know, I have to say, as somebody who does have a lot of friends who are not just pro-choice, but like in the business of providing abortions, I feel for them and I understand what they're going through right now. And that's why I began the show by saying they have been misled. They've been misled by the Roe court and the Casey court, and they should feel angry at them. You know, and most of my honest friends, especially the smart ones like the doctors, they get that Roe was hanging by a thread called stare decisis. You know, it was hanging by a threat that required subsequent courts to just be deferential to Roe as a precedent. And this court absolutely demolished the stare decisis

analysis, basically saying, look, what you're entitled to is the analysis about whether you deserve that sort of respect. And if you do, we got to give it to you. And if you don't, then we don't. And all the factors, the five factor test of stare decisis do not bode in favor of honoring Roe and Casey as viable precedents. So I just think that I understand the outrage because we have been misled that this is a constitutional right for nearly 50 years. But an honest analyst will go back and look at even what Lawrence Tribe said. Alan mentioned him. He's a leftist professor at Harvard who has been very critical of Roe from the beginning,

saying, you know, I like it, but it's not a very good legal decision. Right. Like, that's the truth. We're just getting honest about what they did back then. Yeah, I mean, to me, when I look at something like this, I ask myself, does this make for more democracy or for less democracy? And it seems very clear that it makes for more democracy, right? That there was something, you know, really slightly more so wherever you stand on that, that was not reflective of where the nation was at at the time that Roe became law. And I think that, you know, a lot of the rage, I agree with you about the being misled. I think a lot of people on the left were under the impression that they had a kind of permanent majority and they were no longer going to have to deal with the fact that half of the nation did not agree with them on some major issues. And I think President Trump

really overturned that. He was sort of like the return of the repressed, right? Like, you know, this, you know, huge populist energy of people who said, you know, you've silenced us for too long. And this is sort of, you know, the unraveling of that through the legal system. And I but I don't see how you could say that there's something undemocratic about saying the people should be making these decisions, you know, for themselves. You are so right that Adam Seward, staff writer for The Atlantic. The headline was The Constitution is Whatever the Right Wing Says It Is. And he writes, The Supreme Court has become an institution whose primary role is to force a right wing vision of American society on the rest of the country. Now, I don't agree with that at all,

but I kind of laughed because I was like, oh, is it upsetting when an important institution is controlled by someone you disagree with politically? Welcome to every day of a non leftist life in America. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of projection going on, I think, in terms of, you know, them saying this is fascism, this is dictatorship, when actually what's being said is this is going to go back to the most local of local governments and people are going to be able to decide for themselves. And, you know, honestly, I think that that's going to be that the thing that saves us from going too far to the right. You know, I mean, it's very hard to imagine that these legislatures will be able to do things like ban contraceptives and not be voted out very, very quickly. It's not going to happen. I agree with that. That's not that's a scare tactic by people who don't like this decision. There's no political will to do that. And even if there were,

even if the state did it and you tried to bring it up to the Supreme Court, if a state did it, then somebody would challenge it and say the state banned contraception and the Supreme Court would take that and they would strike down that ban in a second because they'd say, we made very clear, see the five times we said in the majority opinion of Dobbs, that contraception is not in danger. And that would be that. That would be that. So that really is a scare tactic. I've taken a very honest look at it because, you know, I want to be right legally and I want to be right more than I want to be loved. And I really think that's a scare tactic by the left. Now, of course, I mean, I don't know how far left I should go in my analysis soundbites.

But you got this guy, Elie Mestal of the nation, and he's, I think, an MSNBC contributor. This is his take on what what the takeaway is in the wake of the Dobbs decision. Well, the way that that it lines up with everything that the court is doing is that their their view of the country, the conservative view of the country, is that if dead white men didn't say it in the 18th century, it doesn't exist. And we know that to be an intellectually bankrupt point, because the same people who say that ignore the Ninth Amendment, where those dead white men said, we can't possibly say all the rights that exist. So it's a it's a it's a full on broadside attack on liberal democracy. OK, all that matters, you know, he was is whether you're

a cisgendered male, basically, did a white man say in the 18th century, he went on to say basically need to be a cisgendered male imposed a leftist liberal view on the nation at a time when the nation at that time was not there. And now the nation is not there. And when that was taken away, they suddenly start crying foul and saying, you know, oh, this is not democratic. This is, you know, there's no democracy here. Right. And I think that that that thing where you look, we live in a nation of

people who have different points of view, and we have to respect those. That is literally the definition of democracy. That is what our nation is built on. That's where all of our rights and protections come from. I will just point out, though, the divide on abortion is a lot smaller than people say that it is. So, you know, it looks like something that is totally polarizing, right? 49% of Americans say they're pro-choice, 49% say they're pro-life. But when you drill down into the details, there's just so much consensus. So, you know, 87% of Americans believe if the mother's life in danger and abortion should be legal. 84% believe that in cases of rape and incest, it should be legal, including 70 percent of Republicans believe

in rape and incest exceptions. Only 34 percent of Americans think it should be legal after the first trimester. So that's the Mississippi law, right? Twelve to 15 weeks. That's where the European law, 60 percent of Americans are at. Yep. And the European law. That's where the Europeans are, too, after first trimester. It's not allowed. And only 19% of Americans think it should be legal in the third trimester. And the thing that I find so frustrating about this, though, is that when you look at where the political parties are, instead of catering to that, you know, to 66% of Americans, right? You have one side saying, we demand that a woman be able to choose to do this up until the day that the baby is born, right? They never put an upper limit on it.

And then the other side saying, we're going to get rid of the rape and incest exceptions, right? Meaning they're one side's catering to 19% and one side's catering to 30%. And I find that very frustrating, Megan. I don't know about you. Mm-hmm. No, of course. But I also feel like now it's going to go the way it ought to go, because what the Supreme Court did in Roe and Casey was tell the one side, you don't get to fight anymore. You're it. It's over. We're it. Our decision is final. And we now want you to accept this as final. And they didn't have buy in, you know, like half the country. As I said before, 30 states

in the country banned abortion entirely when Roe came down. And then Casey comes along 22 years later and basically affirms Roe mostly. And not much changed. Still, more than half the states opposed abortion on demand. And now here we are in 2022 and 26 states petitioned the government or the Supreme Court to overturn Roe and Casey. Nothing has settled. They remained as ardent and angry about this issue and it being taken away from the citizenry today as they were, you know, arguably back in 1973 and certainly back in 1992. So the court solved nothing. It injected itself into an area where it did not have the right to be. This court, in an explosive way, for sure, got the court out of it finally. Right. It's been laboring under this role of trying to be a super legislature and decide, well, what's an undue burden on a woman? Where do we draw the line? What's viability?

What like they don't know. This is what Justice Scalia was saying all the time. He's like, I don't know anything. He's like, how did I get asked these questions? You know, he was saying if we go, he used to point to the Eighth Amendment, the prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment and say, OK, the court changes its opinion based on evolving standards of decency underneath that. So yesterday, it's it's it's decent. It's considered OK to execute a person who commits certain crimes. But tomorrow, the evolving standards of decency could say that's no longer OK and that's cruel and unusual punishment. And therefore, the Eighth Amendment applies. He said he used to say, how do I know? I don't know anything. He said people used to come to me. They'd ask me like about some the latest Hollywood star. All they see is a blank look on my face. I don't know shit. I don't know about the evolving standards. That's what we have lawmakers for. They're the ones who are supposed to keep their finger on the pulse to answer to the electorate, to be held accountable, to be booted out of office if they misstep. And so that's what this decision is now doing, saying, right, I don't trust Alito or

Kagan or Breyer or Thomas to be my judge on evolving standards of decency. I want somebody who I can fire. Right. That's what the court's trying to get back to. Absolutely. And, you know, to me, I'm looking at this in the context of the bipartisan gun legislation that was just passed. And to me, these are sort of two models, right? There's the model of having the Supreme Court do your dirty work and impose from above a standard that maybe, I mean, I even would agree with that standard, right? But that's, you could hardly say that that is like in an objective way, more democratic. But that model is to prevent Democrats from having to do the hard work of convincing their fellow Americans that they're

right. And when you look at how that bipartisan gun control went, you know, Senator Murphy went in there with an upper limit. He went in there knowing what he could ask for and knowing what he couldn't ask for. Right. He went in there with a with the design to reassure his Republican colleagues that they were going to get somewhere where they could both be not comfortable, maybe, but equally uncomfortable. Right. They did the hard work of persuasion. And that's how we got that great gun safety bill, right? Which, you know, satisfied everybody a little bit, unsatisfied everybody a little bit more. That's what a democracy looks like. That's what legislation is supposed to look like. And that is the model that I really wish the Democrats would

sort of be leaning into. But unfortunately, because of there's so much overreach, left wing overreach going so far away from where most Americans are at, you know, they know that that's kind of a lost cause. And so they look to the Supreme Court instead. And then you have situations like this. Yeah, exactly. They've lost control of this body that they counted on to say it's a living, breathing constitution that evolves over time instead of what I believe it actually is, which is a document that, as Scalia would say, should have been interpreted, interpreted based on its actual text. And, you know, through what is reasonable based on the actual text. And then if you don't like where that leads us to the point about, oh, we're going to we got to deal with what 18th century men thought and only those guys. No, you can amend it. You can amend the Constitution like we did with the 19th Amendment,

like we did in getting women's suffrage. There are in today's day and age, that would have been a no brainer under the living Constitution. They would have brought a claim to say, oh, my God, of course, how can you be equal? How can a woman have true liberty if she doesn't have the right to vote? And this court would have said, yeah, you're absolutely right. But under the old system that all jurists really agreed with for the first hundred plus years of our existence, you had to go amend the Constitution if you wanted that. And they and the support was there.

And on an issue like abortion, it's not there. So we can't get a constitutional amendment. And that's as it should be. So now it goes down to the state level. But as I was saying to Charles Cook, the media has got a thumb on the scale. And what we're going to get, so what is it now? June. Is it still June? I've been on vacation. It's June. And all we're going to get in July, in August, in September, in October, leading up to these midterms, is another terrible story about a woman who desperately needed, or a young girl, an abortion and couldn't

get it in one of these southern states. And we are not going to get any stories about you about women who actually wound up having their babies because their state banned it and are so incredibly thankful that they did because it's this incredible gift. And they now see that and they were in a moment of weakness when they wanted the abortion and they've seen it totally different. So how does that play? capital, right, to the woke corporations, you're now seeing, you know, more pressure on the right to support women who make the decision to have those babies, right, you know, to have sort of tax credits for kids to have more family support. So I think that's a really great development. In terms of what the media is going to do, I totally agree with you. I mean, it's very clear they have their thumbs on the scales, not even so much from a partisan point of view, but because the biggest divide in the abortion debate is actually the college

divide. You know, 70 percent of college educated Americans support it and only 50 percent of people without a college degree do. Right. And that, of course, is like the number one dividing factor in terms of what our media looks like. Everybody has a college degree. Most people have a graduate degree. They're in that class. And so they have all of those same values. You know, but I will say I do want to hear those stories because like right now I feel quite skeptical that there are going to be stories like that. Just because there there is so much private sector funding now to move women to state to get women to states to get those abortions. Right. There is so much attention being paid to that. So if there are areas where women are going to be penalized for things like miscarriages or for things like, you know, ectopic pregnancies for things where they really, really needed an abortion, can't get it and tragedy happens. I think that's actually important to highlight

because, you know, yeah, their legislators should be paying attention to that stuff. We should be making sure that, you know, nobody is, you know, God forbid, endangered by any of this. And the other on the same score, you're not going to see much coverage, if at all, of the pro-life, which are really just assistance to pregnant women clinics that are getting firebombed. Oh, yeah. Right. Places like Colorado. We saw some in Wisconsin a couple of weeks ago that that'll get totally ignored. And that that to me is truly insane, because truly, who are the people like my mom has been volunteering at those places for my entire life? What does she do? She goes out, she buys baby bottles, she gets diapers, she get like,

they make sure that mothers who are now expecting babies, and they weren't planning on this pregnancy, have some assistance, and make sure that they have a car seat to take the baby home and like things like that. Who the hell would bomb that kind of a play? Right. Like what kind of a sicko takes out their anger over this? But that story gets buried by the media. But that doesn't go along with the narrative and they don't want to tug on those heartstrings. No, absolutely. I mean, it's there definitely, you know, you can expect the liberal media to do as liberal media does. Right. And keep pushing the Democrats agenda. I mean, I totally agree with you. That's what we're very likely to see coming down the pike. The question is, is that going to be enough to distract voters from inflation and crime and all the ways in which Democrats are failing them? same college divide exists within communities that do often take advantage of abortion, that do often find themselves in that situation. The Black community is deeply ambivalent about

abortion. Democrats act like this is on their behalf. Well, go and talk to people in those communities. It's not a simple thing. There's a lot of Christian people in those communities, right? What are they thinking? What are they talking about at the dinner table? What's going on in those churches, right? How are they going to vote in November? I really think that it's a lot more complicated than the media wants us to know. Of course. So good to see you. Thank you for coming on.

It's wonderful to get your perspective and there'll be plenty more opportunities to come back on this. Thank you so much for having me. It was so great to see you. All right. Coming up, you hear everywhere. I mean, you turn on CNN, you turn on MSNBC, you turn on any of the mainstream, you're going to see woman after woman crying over this issue. And that's not to diminish their tears. As I've said before,

I understand them. I understand them perfectly. I mean, I've been talking to my friends who are really, really upset. But where are where are the women and the men, but the women in particular, who are overjoyed about this ruling. You won't see them on the mainstream, but you will see one right here. Lila Rose, who has dedicated her life to fighting for a decision like the one we got on Friday, is here. And I will ask her how it felt to see that opinion hit. Our next guest is a pro-life advocate and president and founder of Live Action, a nonprofit anti-abortion organization, Lila Rose. She's been in this fight for years. I mean, it's something to see, right? When you look at the actual decision and the opening

summary of it, where it says, held held the Constitution does not confer a right to abortion. Roe and Casey are overruled and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives. What did you feel? I mean, a lot of emotions, but the main one, Megan, was gratitude because the court finally gave the pro-life movement a fighting chance to protect children. I mean, that's what this was. This wasn't some big pro-life win in the sense of the Supreme Court sides with the pro-life side. As you know, this was now pro-life states can actually protect children in their states. And so gratitude. I mean, the day of this decision on Friday, last Friday, abortion clinics were already

shutting down in Alabama, in Texas, in Utah, because the trigger laws, some trigger laws already went into effect. So it was it was just a day of joy for those children whose lives were going to be saved. That's exactly right. What you said, it gave the pro-life movement a fighting chance. That's what was taken away by Roe and Casey. You're not allowed to fight. And as the Casey court in its hubris said, you will accept this as the final decision and you will stop arguing is essentially what they said. You will now stand down and simply accept this, which totally misunderstood the depth of the feeling on this issue, not just by Lila Rose, but by nearly half

the country. Exactly. Which, as I pointed out, 26 states supported the overturning of these two decisions. Yeah. I mean, Megan, the the large majority of Americans support abortion restrictions. Less than 20 percent of Americans don't want restrictions. So 80 percent majority of Americans support abortion restrictions. Less than 20% of Americans don't want restrictions. So 80% plus of Americans want abortion restrictions. And that's what Roe v. Wade prohibited effectively is having restrictions state by state, or it made it a, you know, this big battle in the courts every single time, any law, even a 15 week abortion ban, which was Mississippi's law that was contested. I mean, 15-week abortion ban, that's something that most of Europe has. I mean, we are one of the most extreme nations in the world up there with North Korea and China with our extraordinary, extremely

liberal abortion law. So the fact that the Supreme Court has done this, I mean, as a public movement, we don't see this as full justice because we see these are humans with human rights and the right to live is not something that can be decided upon by a majority vote. Right. But at least now the majority vote can protect them. Before it was remember, it was seven men in 1973. It was seven men who ruled Roe v. Wade. They decided that abortion was now some sort of a constitutional right. It has been this tiny fraction of individuals and men, I'll say, that have been behind this. And, you know, this message coming out from the left right now, the far left, you know, from politicians are saying, you know, democracy

is at risk because Roe v. Wade has been overruled. You've heard that, you know, from, you know, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and others saying that this is an attack on our democracy. It's an attack on our country. I mean, it's wildly irrational. And but that's kind of been the whole the whole the whole thing in this entire time with abortion on demand. The law behind it has been wildly irrational. And finally, it's beginning to be set right. The dissent takes real issue with the majority and says, hey, you didn't give any thought at all to what women are going through, what the rights of a woman and what's in her best interest if she wants to have an abortion. And truly, the same could be said for the dissent when it comes to the rights of the unborn. I mean, they don't even tip the hat to, OK, third trimester, the rights kick in, you know, like this is a real they talk about balance, but they spend absolutely no time on why people like you have been fighting as hard as it's not that you just look at a woman and say, too bad, suck it up. It's because there's something else that matters

that's really important. And people can decide, you know, where in the process it matters more, you would say right from the moment of conception. But the dissent doesn't even tip its hat to that. Yeah. I mean, there's a strange mythology that's kind of left over from, I think, the 1960s and 70s, like the sexual revolution, which was a reaction in many ways to what was seen as the Puritan ideals that preceded it. And it's just like mythology now that in a pregnancy, there's only one person. It's the woman and there's not another human life involved. And the science is crystal clear here.

It has been for decades. We've known this, that human life doesn't begin at birth. Human life begins at the moment of fertilization. And you have this embryo, then this fetus, and then this newborn, then this toddler. And that's the span of the beginning of human beings' life. And so I think more and more I'm seeing millennials, Gen Zers, a lot of women, millions of us who are passionately pro-life and we're not buying that. I really think outdated and very irrational viewpoint that feminism or, you know, to be pro-woman is to be

for killing children in the womb. And instead you can walk and chew gum at the same time. You know, you can be a woman and be a mother and have an amazing future and an amazing career and an amazing life. And actually having children is one of the most, I believe it's the most amazing thing you can do with your life, whether you're a woman or a man. So that positive view of womanhood, it's a positive view of children is I think taking root more and more. And we're rejecting this fear-based, restrictive view of womanhood that says we literally have to kill children and pregnancy in order to be advanced. Okay. So this is an important point because you heard

Elie Mestel of The Nation, MSNBC, talking about how it's all these 18th century guys. We have to just stick by their opinions. And it kind of goes back to, in part, what Alito was saying in his majority, and I outlined it in my opening talking points, which is, you know, they they said, OK, the Constitution is what it is. There's nothing about abortion in there. But yes, we have recognized some implicit rights in the Constitution, only in a few cases. And so in deciding whether whatever it is you're pitching to us is an implicit right, we have to look at a couple of things. And one of those things is, does that right that you're saying is implicit in the Constitution, though not explicit, have some long tradition in our country? Is it something that we always acknowledge? It wasn't in there, but like we always said, you know, we're going to live like

this. We're going to allow this. And abortion is not even arguably on the list. Now, this has the dissent and some pundits on the left saying we can't just stop in terms of our rights and our analysis of the Constitution with the way the country was in 1868 when the 14th Amendment was passed. We don't. Women couldn't even vote back then. So it's so archaic for us to be saying that's where we stop. OK, so let's say and you can make the argument the opposite way. I mean, Scalia would say, yes, you can. You can do that.

And if you don't like the outcome, you go and you petition for an amendment to the Constitution. You do what needs to be done to change things like we did with the 19th Amendment. But putting that to the side. OK, let's look at modern day. Where are we? Because it's it's knowable how people feel in 2022 America. Are we still at the point where men run everything? Men make all the decisions. What's happening in the 50 states when it comes to abortion? How many states supported this push to overturn Roe versus Casey? Was it all states that have a majority male legislature? Mississippi? It doesn't pan out well for the dissenters or the left when you ask those questions. Well, and now, Megan, we don't even know who's a woman and who's a man anymore. So it doesn't. Oh, they're very clear.

Have you can you Matt? I can you I've been shocked at the number of people who will actually say women now in the context of this discussion. They say birthing people. We're not allowed to be women anymore. Now we're just birthing persons. But listen, I mean, they've lost the plot that you can't. It's not sustainable because, first of all, all the major pro-life organizations are led by women. 75% of live action's 6 million following is women, mostly Gen some sort of legal precedent for abortion as a right

is preposterous. I mean, historically there have been laws against abortion, you know, for hundreds of years, whether it's British common law or American law. And, and also it's been seen societally as it should be as a very sad, negative thing. I mean, any woman who walks into an abortion clinic, she's not walking in feeling powerful and triumphant. She knows deep in her heart, she's, she's walking there out of fear, out of maybe even coercion because of loss, because of concerns for her financial status, her education, whatever it is. We know deep down as a society, you know, and people are really honest with themselves that it would be better if there was no abortion. And I, and I, in my hearts to hearts with pro choice friends or with, you know, abortion advocates, even when they've really been honest, it's like, yeah, it would be better if

there was none of it. It's always been that way because we know it takes an innocent human life. So now the focus should be besides legal protection, the focus of the pro-life movement is, and it has been for decades. Again, this doesn't get any media coverage, Megan, as you know, but it has been okay okay, make life better for pregnant moms and young moms, make life better for young families, provide material resources and care, strengthen up marriages, make marriages stronger, you know, educate young kids to respect their bodies and respect each other in the way that they date so that they're not just hooking up all the time and getting pregnant. And, you know, we have all of this unplanned pregnancy.

This is a culture of life that we're trying to build. And we're doing a lot of concrete work in that space and have been in the pro-life movement. And, and really enough with this lie that we've been telling ourselves as a society now, since 1973, that abortion is a human right. No life is a human right. It's even in our constitution, by the way, that is in the constitution under the 14th amendment, no state shall deprive anyone of the right to life without due process. I mean, equal protection under law. You could argue the pro-life position from there that it's in the Constitution. Abortion's not. Now let's focus on making life better for everybody. I think that's that's that's where we can come together as a country. What did you make of the Ana Navarro comments about, you know, I've got I've got a relative who's got Down syndrome and I've got a relative whose son is autistic and they're, you know, the ability to get state assistance with these children is a lot harder than people will tell you.

And therefore, therefore, abortion needs to remain legal. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine how her family must have felt, her extended family, if they heard her say those really vicious words. I mean, it's ableism at its finest and ageism at its finest, because I'm more able-bodied than you as a person with Down syndrome or you as a person with autism, then it would be better for you to not live. And I'm going to spout off my belief about that on national television and you're my own family member. I mean, is there anything more depraved than wishing aloud on national television that your own family member hadn't been born and it had been aborted instead? I mean, it just shows again, the divide in our national consciousness on this matter. And I do think, I mean, it just shows, again, the divide in our national consciousness on this matter.

And I do think, I mean, I even heard from some pro-choice people, again, that were disgusted by her comments. I mean, they still consider themselves pro-choice. They're still kind of hanging on to that abortion ideology. They're still working through it in their own minds. But even then, they know, OK, that doesn't sound right. But that's what it is, right? That's what abortion has been, Megan, as you know,

from the beginning, when Planned Parenthood was founded by Margaret Sanger in the early 20th century, at the time, their weapon of choice, you could say, was birth control and forced sterilization. They were behind forced sterilization efforts, but they wanted to limit and control the populations that they saw as less fit. And that included the black population, minority groups. It included people with disabilities, intellectual and physical disabilities. And Margaret Singer was very open about this. She was a eugenicist proudly. And eugenics is this idea that we can create a better, cleaner race that's more perfect, more perfect bloodline. And that's the foundation of abortion ideology in this country.

And there's no surprise then that 60% plus in this country alone of children who are tested to be found with Down syndrome are killed because they have Down syndrome. And then in a country like the Netherlands and Europe, it's a hundred percent. They actually celebrated. We have a hundred percent, no Down syndrome in this country. It's not because children weren't being conceived with Down syndrome. It's because they were being killed before birth. So that's the gross future of abortion on demand. And that's what the Supreme Court has now given us a chance to fight against. And of course, you don't need a reason at all. I mean, you can just say, it's a boy and I wanted a girl. I'm killing it. I mean, it's like our rules are non-existent. And I mean, you can find out now what the potential eye color is killing it. I mean, it's right. It's like our rules are non-existent.

I mean, you can find out now what the potential eye color is and decide. I mean, it's really there. There's very few limitations on abortion, especially in states like the ones where, you know, I've been living and live now, New York and now Connecticut. So it's we were due for a correction of some type if you look at majority opinion. But let me ask you about the other side, as I mentioned in the break, that, you know, if you turn on any sort of mainstream news, you're going to hear a crying woman. And I understand. I understand. I have empathy for the women who are crying over this. I do because I do think they've been misled by courts for 50 years about what their rights are and they're confused. And, you know, the media keeps telling them that

we have this extremist court, blah, blah, blah um but i think if you go to the more most extreme case it always makes you pause right and then on the daily the podcast of the new york times today they were talking about they interviewed four abortion clinic workers in states where the trigger laws kicked in already and they there was one abortion clinic worker who was emotional and talking about a grandmother who called about her 14-year-old granddaughter. Here's that soundbite. This patient called me for her granddaughter. She's a minor.

I'm going to cry. Okay. It's okay. She asked if I can schedule her an appointment, and I told her, unfortunately, we're not doing abortion care in the clinic until further notice. And she told me, what are we supposed to do? She's only 14.

This was not her fault. So I'm just sitting there listening to the grandma cry. And she went on to say that it was, I can't remember if it was a rape or an incest, but it was one of those situations. And that's the kind of thing that really does move hearts and minds on the other side. Yeah. I mean, Megan, listen, it's heartbreaking if she was a victim of rape or incest, or even if just you're 14 and you're facing an unplanned pregnancy, how challenging, how

devastating that can be. And no one is denying that. But let me tell you how many women I have spoken with Megan over the years who were that, who was that 14 or 15 or 16 year old girl who went and had the abortion. I mean, the grandmother is negotiating it, right? It's like the family gets together and says, you're going to, let's go get you that abortion. And years, decades later, they are sitting there in pain, regretting it. So again, you know, that, that monolith viewpoint coming from, you know, New York times or NPR is that the girl who's pregnant and doesn't have an abortion,

she's doomed, right. Or abortion is going to somehow get her on with her life and set her up for success. And that's a lie for many, many women, for many, many girls. And their stories are never told mysteriously, You know, the girl literally regrets her teenage abortion. Her story doesn't get told. Why is that? They literally argue that in the papers and the dissent reflects it as well, that equality is not possible for a woman who is unable to obtain, you know, whatever they would call it, reproductive right care or abortion care, that it's not possible. And I've heard, you know, I've heard people who I know, I'm thinking of one friend in particular, who I know had an abortion, who went on to become a professional, argue like, I couldn't have done

this if I had had the child. And I always think to myself, well, how do you know that? How do you know that? You know what I think it is, Megan? I think we've got a whole generation of deeply wounded women and men from abortions in their past. And so the way to deal with that, I mean, that's a life that was destroyed, that could have lived, that could be walking the world, could be at their family reunions, could be picking up, texting them each day, that could be their son or daughter today. And the way they deal with that reality is they have to say it was the right decision. You know, they have to kind of double down and dig in their heels and be like, no, I had to do that. I had to have that abortion. And the reality is, no, you didn't, you didn't have to do that. And that's, you know, the message of our movement is not only did you not have to do that, we're going to help you not have to do that. You know, we want to support each other here, but that that's, what's so devastating about this is a lot of that doubling down that we're seeing. I, I believe, you know, in media and amongst, you know, different abortion activists and

advocates is, is pain, deep buried pain and grief where they're justifying past choices or the past choices that they helped other people make like that grandma, you know, making that choice kind of for that 14 year old. And they're the way to justify it is to try to say, you know, making that choice kind of for that 14 year old. And there, the way to justify it is to try to say, you know, my life would have sucked without it. And going forward, we need abortions for everyone. And I'm gonna say one more thing about the media stuff, Megan, you know, it baffles me. The abortion industry is an industry. They make money off of abortions. They make 500, 600 to thousands up to tens of thousands. If it's a late term abortion up to

$20,000 for some of these late term abortions and they make money off of thousands if it's a late-term abortion, up to $20,000 for some of these late-term abortions. And they make money off of it. It can be very profitable for abortion workers. To watch what's happening in the media right now, I have never seen more marketing for an industry. Maybe the pharmaceutical company with vaccines, you could say, you could maybe make that debate if you want to. But the marketing for abortion by mainstream media groups, it's it's really stunning to witness. And it's been going on for decades now. You can't get a word in edgewise if you're a pro-lifer, you know, with pro-life facts and facts about human development, the risks of the abortion procedure. No, there's no space for you on the program, you know, if you're a pro-life.

But if you're in support of abortion, they will go ad nauseum, uh, for that's exactly right. I'm looking forward to the New York times podcast that features you and some of the women that you've been talking about, they're not going to do it. Yeah. And you know what else? I mean, there's just a case in point. I did an interview with CNN for this mini documentary. They won't have me on live primetime. It's just this documentary on this like strange activist that I am. I'm like, there's millions of me. I'm not the only one, but you know, they're trying to make me out to be some, you know, one of one in one in a million. I'm one of millions, but anyways, and, and they said, well, what would you say to this woman in this terrible situation who really wants an abortion?

You know, what would you say to her? You know, you're the counterpoint, et cetera. And I said, you know what? No, the guests you need, that is the counterpoint, if you will, to the woman who really wants that abortion is the child who survived an abortion attempt on their life, right? Or the child whose mother at the last minute chose life. And now they're out there advocating for life. And one of those people is on my staff, Christina Bennett. Her mother was sitting on the abortion table, had this check of conscience in her heart, got up, got up. Christina's this beautiful mother, foster mom. Now she's amazing.

She's one of our spokeswomen. That's the counterpoint. You know, I'm not the victim here. I'm an advocate. The counterpoint is the girl, Claire Colwell, who was literally almost aborted. Her twin was aborted. They tried to kill her too. She survived.

She ended up getting carried to term. Now her twin is dead because of an abortion, but she's too. She survived. She ended up getting carried to term. Now her twin is dead because of an abortion, but she's alive. She's an abortion survivor. Put her on NPR. I want to hear her story. The New York Times doing a profile on her. No, they're not going to, because that doesn't fit their narrative. What about that? Because we are hearing a lot about women are going to die as a result of this. Women are going to die as a result of this. And that could be true. I think it is very easy to get an abortion across state lines if you really need one or want one. And certainly with the abortion medications that you can now get,

I'm sure, you know, it's going to be harder, but it's not going to be impossible for women to get abortions in these states. But, you know, it doesn't talk about how the fact that like a baby dies every time an abortion is performed. And I realized it's not yet an actual baby that can sustain life on its own, but there's no denying potential human life. I know, right. It's like, there's no denying the viability argument. Just again, it kind of baffles me that they're so stuck on this when you're not viable when you're a newborn, you know, you're not viable when you're a two-year-old, you're hardly viable when you're an 18 year old, you're in your mother's basement, but you know,

in this economy sometimes, but my point is we need each other and children always need their parents. And to say, well, the child's not viable, you know, before 21 weeks. And so you can kill it. You're not supposed to be viable outside the womb at 20 weeks. You're supposed to be dependent on your mother. And when you're a newborn baby, you're also supposed to be dependent on your mother or someone who's mothering you. So this idea that, you know, the child has to do it on its own. It just it's it's it's wildly irrational. It doesn't even make sense. And I think we need to break up because you're so good at responding to these. What about the argument that what kind of a life are these kids being set up for? You know, born to a mother that doesn't really want them, want them. Not all mothers

will reverse their decision making and think, oh, it's such a blessing. You know, some are like, I don't need another kid and I don't want this kid. And they maybe the mother was right. She's not cut out for motherhood, but she doesn't make a good decision when the kid's born. She doesn't put it up for adoption. You know, what about that situation where that's I think where a lot of people say like, yeah, you want to get, it's an unwanted pregnancy. It was born of something horrible, like a, like a rape or something. And the mother's never going to love the child and it's destined for a terrible life. Yeah. No one's destined for a terrible life. I mean, that's a lie. No one is,

no one is doomed. And you know, our responsibility is what keep doing what we're doing the movement and keep growing it networks of support, social safety nets, uh, providing support for young moms, single moms, providing support for young families, that material care and pregnancy resource centers, that material care in the foster care system. I mean, most of the pro-lifers I know either donate to foster care parents like myself, or they are foster care parents, or they're supporting them practically in some way we can, we can do better. We can help each other. The solution can never be to kill somebody who's innocent. You know, we can never turn to violence, especially against an innocent child because of social ills, you know, that, that can't be, that's a non-starter. How about this from Megan Rapinoe,

soccer star, uh, about the decision. It doesn't keep one single person safer. It doesn't keep one single child safer. Really? Like you can't. I mean, yeah, I mean, I would I mean, I would just say, you know, can you just look at a, look at a biology textbook or look at a human development chart, go to your OBGYN's office and look on the wall of the development chart of the different stages of pregnancy and the development of that baby. This is a human life. It's, this is a child, someone's son or daughter. So if we're going to play the game of, it's not a human life, it's not a child.

Why do we even need abortion? You know, if it's not alive, why do you need to end the pregnancy? There's, there's nothing, there should be nothing there, right? It's just talking nonsense at some point. And, you know, that's why laws matter, Megan, because we can educate, but some people are going to just persist in wrong thinking. And that's where we need, we do need legal protections for children. You know, there are people out there who will not be reasoned with. But the good news is most people will be reasoned with. Um, but the good news is most people will be reasoned with. And I see people becoming pro-life literally every day. You know, we're

reaching 15 million, 20 million people a week with our content. And last week it was like, you know, a crazy amount over the weekend. And people literally send us messages on the daily multiple times. I was pro-abortion or pro-choice now I'm pro-life. Thank you so much for this information. People are changing on this. They're waking up and saying, this is a child. Abortion ends the 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 on. Now you can't be silenced in making your point of view clear because there's going to be a vote and there will be people on both sides that need information. And then people can make up their own minds state by state, vote with their feet if they don't

want the result in their state. Trust me, as a more right leaning person who's been living in blue states for my entire life, I've had to vote with my feet. I did it within the past couple of years. Didn't wind up in a particularly red state, but at least one that was a little bit more reasonable. And I wanted to stay in the Northeast. But we've been doing this for a long time and it can continue to be done. Lila Rose, thank you so much for coming on. We appreciate it. Thank you, Megan. All the best.

Tomorrow, we have a newsmaker who has never before been on this show. And it's a great time to have her. She's been requested by a lot of you quite a bit. Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota will be with us. And what a great time to have her as these states take off the abortion issue, as hers has. She's getting a lot of blowback on it, but also a lot of support. So we'll get into whether these policies make sense, whether there's going to be blowback on the GOP as the states make these decisions. And who better to ask?

OK, so in the meantime, download The Megyn Kelly Show on Apple, Pandora, Spotify, and Stitcher so you don't miss an episode. And we would love it if you'd watch us at youtube.com slash Megyn Kelly. There you can see my hot pink dress, which I'm really happy about today. I have to say it's very pretty. Thank you so much for watching,

for listening, and for making us part of your daily feed. We are grateful. Thanks for listening, and for making us part of your daily feed. We are grateful. Thanks for listening to The Megyn Kelly Show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.