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

Episode Date: June 25, 2022

On this historic day, the Supreme Court votes to overturn Roe v. Wade. Mollie Hemingway and Ryan T. Anderson join the show to discuss this historic decision. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Michael Knowles Show. I should say welcome back to the Michael Knowles show. I know that I'm just starting the show, but I am starting the show for the second time today. And I am starting the show. I've already got a show that went out. It's already out there in your RSS feeds. But I'm doing the show again because just after my show went out, I get on an airplane. I had a wonderful night last night. I was with the Young America's Foundation in Santa Barbara, lots of great young conservatives. I was feeling energized about the country. We do the show, talk about all these great Supreme Court decisions that have been coming out this term, and just, I'm getting on the plane, the show airs, we get this news. Roe versus Wade,

plant parenthood be Casey, two of the worst decisions ever made in the history of the United States. In the case of Roe, probably the single worst Supreme Court decision. decision ever led to the deaths of 63 million babies in the United States since 1973. Those two egregiously, hideously, constitutionally absurd, morally insane cases overruled. Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization. I said when this happened, I'm on the airplane, I see this, I tell the team, we're doing another show today. Get ready.

We're doing another one. This is the most surprising, and I would have to say, the best political event to occur in this country in my lifetime. Remember this date, June 24th, 2022, one of the most important dates in American history. So the decision comes out. I'm getting ready. I say I've got a little bit of time before I go to studio, I'm going to read this decision. I assume most of you, you've been at work all day, you probably haven't had time to read through this 213 page decision. But I think I can sum up this 213 page decision in about 30 seconds to a minute. Here's what happened. You get the decision of the court, six to three rules to uphold the Mississippi pro-life law that brought this to

to the Supreme Court in the first place. So you get the conservatives and you get John Roberts. John Roberts, the Chief Justice. He's a swing vote. He's supposed to be a conservative, but he's pretty squishy. So you get Alito. You get Thomas. You get Kavanaugh. You get Barrett. You get Gorsuch. You get Chief Justice Roberts vote to uphold the Mississippi law. Then the three libs say they're not going to uphold the law. But the decision that everyone's talking about is not the six three decision. It's a five, four decision. Because five, five. Justices, it's the Conservatives, no Roberts, vote to go further than just upholding the Mississippi law. They vote to overrule Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. So here's what they say.

The court majority, written by Sam Alito, basically identical to that leaked draft that we saw some weeks ago. They say the Mississippi law is legit and the Planned Parenthood v. Casey and Roe v. Wade are not legit. Done. Then the Libs scream and they say, we really want abortion. Then Chief Justice Roberts says, in his own opinion, he says, hey guys, look, can we please just not deal with the whole Roe v. Wade thing right now? Can we maybe take that up at a later date? We don't, let's not talk about that. Then the court majority says, nope, sorry, Chief Justice Roberts, we are talking about that. Then enters Brett Kavanaugh in his own concurring opinion. And he says, yep, I totally agree with the court majority, but I want to be

really, really clear here, the court has basically nothing to say about abortion. One of the briefs that was submitted to the court when this case was being heard was written by Robbie George and John Finnis. These are two conservative legal scholars who argued that actually, not only should the court overturn Roe v. Wade and send the issue of abortion back to the States, but actually, the court should overrule Roe v. Wade and outlaw abortion nationwide. So don't make it just an issue for the legislators, actually go in and say we, say, we the justices, are going to outlaw abortion throughout the United States because of the 14th Amendment, because of equal protection under the law.

Kavanaugh's opinion that he filed separately says, no, that's not correct. We reject that view. This is only about submitting the issue back to the states. Then the justices wind some more and they say, no, no, Brett Kavanaugh, you're downplaying this. This isn't really a modest decision. This isn't really a narrow, limited decision. The decision here in Dobbs is going to imperil all sorts of other issues. And it's really interesting the way that the liberals argued this. They didn't have a good argument as to where the constitutional right to an abortion shows up in the document because it's just not there because it was made up. It was a preposterous opinion at the time and the honest left-wing legal scholars, even the ones who support legal abortion,

have admitted that since then. Well, yes, we want abortion. Maybe we should even uphold Roe because it's been on the books a long time, but it's not a well-argued case. Frankly, even Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed the quote-unquote right to an abortion, actually overruled parts of Roe v. Wade, because Roe v. Wade was a ridiculous decision. So the libs are arguing here with Kavanaugh and with the majority on the court, and they're saying, you're downplaying this, saying this is really narrowly tailored. And we're not going to really make a good argument for abortion here, but we're going to scare all the other Americans and say, well, if we allow the court to overrule Roe v. Wade, they might overrule the Griswold case, the Griswold case,

which found a constitutional right to condoms. This might overrule Lawrence v. Texas, which found a constitutional right to gay sex. This might overrule Obergefell v. Hodges, which found a brand new definition of marriage that has never existed anywhere in all of human history until Anthony Kennedy, the romantic poet of the Supreme Court, decided to find one somewhere in the emanations and the penumbras and whatever bottom of the bong he was smoking at that time. And so that was the argument from the liberals. They said, look, guys, even if you don't think the abortion argument is very strong, what about all these other things? The conservatives are coming for your condoms and your gay stuff. And the majority on the court, said, no, we're not doing that at all. But then in comes Clarence Thomas. And Clarence Thomas has his own

concurring opinion. And he says, yeah, well, but actually, maybe we should come for those things. And it's, frankly, the most interesting part of this opinion, the most interesting part of this ruling is that Clarence Thomas concurring opinion, because it's the most ambitious. It goes the furthest. It doesn't say we're just going to stop here with Roe v. Wade, with Planned Parenthood v. Casey sending abortion back to the states. It says, no, we're going to undo a whole lot of other liberal jurisprudence. Clarence Thomas wanted to go further. There was this question when the leaked draft came out and the draft was written by Sam Alito. A lot of conservatives were wondering, hey, wait a second, why isn't Clarence Thomas the one writing this opinion? We know that Clarence Thomas

hates Roe and Casey. We know that Clarence Thomas. Thomas hates abortion. He's the senior most judge on the court. So why isn't he the one writing it? Now we see why. Because Clarence Thomas wanted to go further than the court did. Clarence Thomas took issue with what is called substantive due process. Substantive due process is this invention by liberals on the court to find a constitutional right to all sorts of things that they want that don't actually appear in the constitution. And so you have an interesting little contradiction here from some of the conservatives, which is the liberals have no argument whatsoever to defend abortion in the Constitution.

So they're just fearmongering about all these other stupid court decisions that they think that people like and they think will scare people into voting for Democrats in the midterms. Then you've got some conservative legal scholars and some conservatives on the court saying, no, those things aren't threatened at all. But then you've got Clarence Thomas, who I think is making the more honest argument. And he's saying, no, those things actually probably should be threatened. You're right. They're not threatened in this opinion of the court, but perhaps they should be. And of course they should be.

In something like Griswold, the Griswold case, the court finds a constitutional right to condoms. Maybe you like condoms. Maybe you think condoms should be legal. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of Americans, if asked their opinion on condoms, would vote to have legal condoms. But does anyone really believe condoms are in the Constitution? Show me the condom clause of the Constitution. I don't see it. Listen, I didn't go to a fancy law school, but I just don't see it. How about gay sexual behavior? Lawrence v. Texas discovers a constitutional right to gay sexual behavior. Gay sexual behavior has broadly been tolerated

throughout most of American history. It's been against the law. in certain parts of the country, and those laws have remained on the books, though they rarely were enforced. And maybe you think that gay sexual behavior is totally fine. Maybe you think homosexual sodomy totally a fine thing. I bet if you put it up to a vote with the vast majority of Americans, they'd vote to have it be legal. Where is the sodomy clause of the Constitution?

Can you find it for me? Do I need to get a magnifying glass out to look just beneath the emanations and just over the penumbras of the special mystery of life closes? Because I don't see it. It's just not there. How about Obergefell? Are you seriously going to tell me that the framers of the Constitution believed that they were redefining marriage to an extent that had never been probably even imagined in human history to say that sexual difference has nothing to do with marriage? And then that true definition of marriage, that marriage can be between a man and a woman or a man in a man or a woman and a woman, that that just lay dormant, lay hidden for all of American history

until about seven or eight years ago when Anthony Kennedy, in his insight and wisdom, discovered it there. You're really going to tell me that? If you put it up for a vote today, I don't know what would happen actually on marriage. Every time that gay marriage, quote-unquote, was put up for a vote, it was shot down. Even in California was shot down. So, I don't know, if you put it up for a vote, maybe it wouldn't get shut down. But today, I suspect it probably would be, it would be upheld. But regardless of your views on marriage, show me that definition in the Constitution. You're not going to find that there.

And so the liberals do have a point. The liberals do have a point. They have wielded the courts to push radical policies for at least 50 years now. I guess much more than that, probably more like 70 years. And they have perverted our jurisprudence. They have destroyed the integrity of the court. They've made our politics coarser, more dangerous, more violent, less democratic for that matter. It's very funny to me that the people who wrap themselves in the mantle of democracy

are the ones protesting right now and trying to docks the justices and screaming their heads off outside the Supreme Court. whatever you think about abortion, this decision, Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization, is one of the most pro-democracy decisions ever. It might be the single most pro-democracy decision ever in the history of the United States. It takes a matter that the courts, the nine robed lawyers on the Supreme Court, had taken away from the people to decide and returns it to the people to decide. That's pro-democracy. And yet the alleged pro-democracy crowd, the ones who shriek and scream and clutch their pearls about our sacred, wonderful democracy, they're the ones who oppose it. We have a whole lot to say, obviously, about this decision itself. You almost couldn't wish

for a better decision, given the political realities that we are living in right now, just an absolutely magnificent ruling. We have to talk about the politics of this, of course, as well. It's not just about, it's primarily about bioethics and these babies that are now going to live because of the courage of these justices, and frankly, the courage of Mitch McConnell and the courage of Donald Trump and the political ability of them to get all of this through and the courage of people to vote for these guys and stand up and really fight back in our political order. That's the most important thing. Then there's, of course, the legal question, the constitutional question.

Then there's a political question. What does this mean? We are in an election year right now. We are in the heat of the midterm elections. What is this historic ruling going to mean for November here to help me discuss is the great Molly Hemingway, editor-in-chief of the Federalist, senior journalism fellow at Hillsdale and a Fox News contributor. Molly, thank you for being here. It is great to be here with you, Michael. It is truly great. This ruling came out when I was on an airplane. I haven't slept probably in a

week. I've been on the road doing all sorts of. We'd already put my show out today. I said, I don't care. Get me some coffee. Clear the schedule. This might be, well, it might be. This is the greatest day for American politics in my lifetime. It is easily the greatest day for so many people who survived this regime of Roe v. Wade. Most of us were born after it was implemented. You know, that we survived is a wonderful gift first off. But it also speaks to how much work went into this from so many different people, you know, the conservative judicial movement, the people who decided to focus on electing senators who would, who would approve good nominees, the decision to actually support Donald Trump, which wasn't easy for a lot of people,

and the pro-life movement got behind him when he said he would nominate good justices. And he did. And, you know, the people who voted for him. And it's just a major day of vindication. There was a lot of failure leading up to this moment. A lot of failures by Republican presidents. But this finally succeeded this approach. And it's really impressive. And a lot of people that you have to thank for it. There are, and it's especially true of the conservative legal movement, and it's especially true of Trump. Past Republican presidents have always been a mixed bag at best when it comes to the judges. And then in walks Donald Trump, and everyone says the guy's a big buffoon, he's a total rube, he doesn't know anything about politics. There's no way that he's going to give us the sort of victories that we want,

especially this one, the kind of holy grail of a constitutional case. and then Trump is three for three. And that's the margin of victory there. Donald Trump, obviously, has already come out and said promises made, promises kept. We did it, guys, wonderful decision. Molly, how do you think this plays politically in November? Well, it's interesting because even as recently as maybe 12 years ago, this was the type of issue that Democrats would use to really orchestrate a media hysteria campaign. We saw that in what was called the War on Women. It was an actual Democrat plot to turn Colorado Blue and other states. But something has changed in that meantime. One, the country has gotten even more pro-life than it was before,

and this decision is frankly very moderate. It's not banning abortion, even as much as pro-life people would love for there to be a protection of all human life. It is pretty much where the American people are, which is they generally oppose abortion, but also generally want it legal at some point. And that's what this type of ruling allows. But there's also the failure of the media. They became such propagandists that no longer are they able to run this type of hysteria campaign and propaganda campaign with the same effect. And so Democrats really tried to make this an issue last year in Virginia in the gubernatorial race. It was basically an abortion race that they tried to make it. And you might remember, Glenn Yonkin won, despite the Democrats trying to make that the signal

signature issue. So do you have any sense moving from the politics of the ballot box in November to the politics of the court? Why did the chief justice not go all the way here? You had a six three ruling on the Mississippi pro-life law, clear as day upholding the law, but then Roberts won't go all the way. In Roberts's opinion, he says, look, guys, I'm fine with the pro-life law, but can't we kind of punt this roe v. Wade issue down the road? Do we really have to deal with this now? and the court says, yes, we do. So it ends up being a 5-4 decision on overruling row. What was the argument here? If the argument was to uphold the integrity of the court, wouldn't a 6-3 decision do much more good for the integrity of the court than this kind

of confusing breakdown we have now? So I first want to mention that I wrote with Kerry Severino a book on the Kavanaugh confirmation. An excellent book on the Kavanaugh confirmation. Thank you. And it kind of gets into some of these discussions about what Robert, was doing and how he's, you know, ruled in different cases. I don't think he makes a lot of sense here. I mean, one of the things that's interesting about Alito's opinion here or decision today, he talks about how they tried to rescue Roe, which everyone agrees was just like the worst legal decision in the history of the court by sort of rewriting it in Casey. And they thought that maybe

it would make it so that it wouldn't be such a contentious issue. And of course, all that happened was their new standards of how to handle abortion jurisprudence just led to even more cases and more confusion. Right. And so Roberts today says, oh, he's fine with the Dobbs. He's fine with Dobbs. He's fine with the state limiting abortion in Mississippi. He just doesn't want to get rid of Roe or like this idea that you could somehow come up with

some new test that would you make the court into this legislature. And it just doesn't really make sense. It doesn't make sense. Unfortunately for Roberts, unfortunately for Roberts, unfortunately for. for the liberals, fortunately, for justice and the American jurisprudential tradition and the Constitution and the babies, it doesn't make sense. And those cases collapsed under the weight of their own incoherence and because of the courage of these conservatives. Molly, thank you so much for being here. Molly Hemingway, everyone go follow her. She's so wonderful. I didn't expect it to happen.

I've never expected it to happen in my life. I even after that draft was leaked, the Alito draft that said they would overrule it, I still didn't really believe that it would happen. That's how significant this ruling is. To help me, to help me parse what it all means, to help me make some sense of it, is my friend Ryan T. Anderson, the president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and the author of the greatest titled book in the history of publishing when Harry became Sally responding to the transgender moment, as well as a number of of other books and publications. Ryan, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Today's a great day to be an American. Today is a truly great day to be an

American. I'm on an airplane when the ruling comes out. I immediately download the ruling. It's 213 pages. I say, okay, well, I got a long flight, so let's go through it. Did the conservatives seem a little split here? You've got Robert saying he's going to uphold the pro-life law, but not go for Roe. You've got Kavanaugh saying he doesn't want the court to really say anything about abortion and just leave this to the legislatures. You've got the majority of the court, the five justices saying that they're going to overrule Roe and Casey, but this isn't going to affect other cases. And then you've got my man, Clarence Thomas, with a concurring opinion. He's and he's telling it like it is. And what the biggest argument from the liberals, as far as I could tell,

is, hey, look, never mind this Roe stuff. We love abortion. We want Roe to remain, but really the scary part is, they're coming for your condoms, they're coming for your gay rights and marriage and things like that. And the majority of the court seems to say, no, that's not true. But then I'm reading the Thomas concurring opinion, and he seems to say, yeah, okay, maybe that's true. What's your take? All right. So I think the first thing we should do is we should celebrate that Roe and Casey are no longer the law of the land. I mean, Roe and Casey are no longer binding precedent on lower courts, and therefore, they're not going to be used to prevent states, and for that matter, the federal government from enacting laws that protect unborn babies and that protect their

mothers from the violence of abortion. I mean, as we're speaking, several states are enforcing their pro-life laws that previously they were prevented from enforcing. And so, you know, you said you never thought you would actually see this day. So, I mean, I think the initial reaction has to be one of, like, praise God, it finally happened. Yeah. 49 years too late. I mean, they should have admitted they made a mistake at the first opportunity. It shouldn't have taken this long.

But, you know, my thought is one of gratitude to the people who didn't give up, who didn't lose hope. It would have been easy, especially after the disaster of Planned Parenthood v. Casey for pro-lifers to just be despondent, to despair. And I think a lot of people played the long game. They worked through the system nonviolently. I mean, it's unlike what we're seeing with Jane's revenge tonight. It's unlike what we've seen with the firebombing of pregnancy resource clinics.

People who worked through the process, they won elections, they got presidents to commit to appointing constitutionalists to the bench, and then they brought the case. And they argued the case, and they made the case. And we won, and we should celebrate that. So, I mean, that's my initial reaction. We had five justices, say, Roe and Casey are no more. Look, Kavanaugh's concurrence is not something I particularly appreciate. I think he should have just not written anything and just signed onto the Alito and period. But, I mean, he seems to be signaling that he's not, that he has no appetite for the 14th Amendment personhood argument, for example.

You know, something that, you know, two scholars that I've learned, you know, a great deal from, John Finnis at Oxford and Robbie George at Princeton, you know, they make the argument that on the original understanding the 14th Amendment, no person can be denied equal protection of the law. They're not talking about Peter Singer people. They're talking about flesh and blood human beings. And the entity in the womb is a human being. It's a person. And a state can't deny it equal protection of the law. I mean, that Kavanaugh is signaling that he's not going to entertain that argument, which means that, you know, for at least the near future, I can't count to five on that argument,

which means you and I and our listeners need to persuade our neighbors to get our elected representatives to pass laws protecting people from the violence of abortion. We have to get to work now. The ball's in our court, so to speak. So in a way, you're actually giving me a little more respect for Kavanaugh in a kind of backhanded way, which is, Kavanaugh writes, and I had the same reaction you did. I thought, why is he even writing this? This is so silly.

But, oh, he's writing it to signal. Don't bring this case. Don't bring the 14th Amendment, Robbie George, John Finnis, Personhood case. It's not going anywhere. At least not right now. I mean, so, you know, I don't, my guess would be that Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch might be more open to that than not. I don't know where Barrett would come down. The chief and Cavanaal would probably not have an appetite for it.

But that means it's something that as we're vetting justice, you know, nominees for the next conservative presidential administration, this can be one of the things that we're looking for. You know, who filed amicus briefs, who, who's embraced the legal. theories that we're going to want to see vindicated. But in the meantime, at the very least, Section 5 of the 14th Amendment says Congress has the authority to enact legislation to protect the rights that the other sections of the 14th Amendment articulate. So there's a role for the federal government for Congress to pass laws protecting babies. There's a role for all 50 states. And that's where the more immediate protections are going to come from. So you're now, what, in Tennessee, I guess, or you need to be working to see your state enact pro-life laws.

I'm in Virginia. Our governor, Governor Yon announced today that he's in favor of a 15-week law. That's not good enough, but it's better than what we currently have. I mean, 15 weeks just gets us to where Europe is. I mean, to give you an idea, like it's not even the Mississippi law was a 15-week law, and it's like, I think, 42 out of the 47 European nations have laws at least that protective, if not more protective. So there's a lot of work to be done.

This is something that Americans, even American conservatives, I think, fail to appreciate the radicalism and the barbarity of the American abortion regime. The Mississippi law puts us on par with France. France, these are people that chop off the heads of their own citizens and decapitate kings and queens. They're the people who invented the term left in political discourse. And they look at Americans, and they say, oh, my gosh, what are you doing to these babies? So obviously, there's, there's a lot of work to be done. What did you make of the Clarence Thomas concurrence? I think Thomas and back when Scalia was on the bench, they would frequently be writing dissents to educate the next generation and to educate law students. They thought they were in

the truth telling business. And even though they kept being outvoted, because at the time, you know, they didn't have enough colleagues who were right thinking, they were going to tell the truth in their dissents to educate that next generation of law student who is now, you know, on the court. Amy Coney Barrett, you know, clerked for Scalia came of age, reading the Scalia dissents. Now she's part of the majority. And I think Thomas is doing something similar with now his concurrences, right? This, you know, in a different era, he would have been writing that opinion as a dissent.

Today he's writing it as a concurrence because he agrees with the bottom line. We're overturning Roe. We're overturning Casey. He's also pointing out that the way that we did this was by operating within the framework. of existing kind of 14th Amendment jurisprudence on so-called substantive due process, he points out that's an oxymoronic term. Due process is a process. Substantive protections are substantives.

There's not a substantive due process. The court just made stuff up. Alito did what he had to do to get five votes, right? And so, you know, Thomas didn't get anyone to join his concurrence, which, you know, shows you know, where people are on the court right now. Alito wrote what he had to wrote. and he wrote what he had to write in order to get five votes. And I think that's, you know, working within settled kind of for the moment, jurisprudence to get to the right outcome.

That's what you have to do to be prudent, to be a statesman. And we should share that. They were intimidated. Cavanaugh had a death threat, you know, an active assassination attempt. They could have caved. Roberts couldn't get anyone to join him in his middle position, right? Roberts didn't concur. He occurred in the, in the, in the, um, concurred in the judgment, but not actually in the opinion. You might say, Ryan, that he, he tried to split the baby. I'll see myself out.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Uh, you're the host. So I can't, you know, come out with the hook and get rid of you. But yeah, I mean, he wanted to say, let's just uphold the Mississippi law, but not overturn Roe and Casey. And, you know, what, what the majority points out and the response to that is that this

means that next year will be back with another case. because we're going to have a 10-week case or an eight-week case or Texas's six-week case. Like, why not just once and for all admit we got it wrong than doing this piecemeal? So I don't see any prudence in what Roberts wrote as his concurring in the judgment opinion. It did leave me scratching my head. It did leave me because I felt it wasn't persuasive. It didn't make a lot of sense. And I felt it didn't even do that thing that Roberts is always so concerned with doing, which is

protecting the integrity and stability of the court. I thought really in many ways, leaving the overruling of Roe as a 5-4 decision, kind of undercut that. So I don't really know what he was thinking. I share your bemusement at his opinion. What do you make of the liberals? I tried to read the liberals' dissent as charitably as I could, and I thought it was embarrassing, particularly compared to Alito's opinion of the court and Thomas's concurrence. I thought it It was just frivolous and a sort of silly dissent. I mean, you would call it sophomoric, but I think that would be an insult to sophomores. I mean, this is like literally, we're just going to repeat a bunch of mantras that, you know,

liberal jurists have been telling ourselves for 50 years without actually addressing any of the counter arguments that the other side has been advancing. And so anyone who knows anything about this area of the law, anyone who's read Alito's opinion. And then you read the dissent, you're like, we're just living in different universes. You're not actually talking about the Constitution. You're just keeping, you keep citing other court rulings. That's justification for this. You know, so this bad court ruling plus that bad court ruling plus that bad court ruling justifies this other bad court ruling.

And then nowhere do they wrestle with the question of, you know, what's the competing interest here? They talk about women on female autonomy. They talk about liberty. They talk about privacy. what value does the child who is killed has? What value are you assigning there? And how do you think it is that you as judges or the Constitution as a document settles that balancing?

And this is Kavanaugh's point where he says, look, I just think the Constitution's silent on this. I mean, that's a more respectable position than the argument of the three dissenters where it's just that these vague notions of privacy and autonomy somehow justify lethal violence in the womb? I can't help but notice that Joe Biden, the currently sitting president, I'll tell you, maybe he's been a crypto-conservative all along.

His Catholicism is coming out, wittingly or unwittingly, as sort of a providential that the second Catholic president manages to preside over the overruling of Roe v. Wade, although he was fighting against a tooth and nail. But because Joe Biden doesn't really believe in anything, and he just kind of blows, blows with the political wins. In 1982, Joe Biden proposed a constitutional amendment that would have done exactly what this

court ruling today did. And yet now he comes out against the ruling. How does one make sense of that? Political opportunism that people have put their eternal soul at risk for the sake of winning an election, which is just really sad. I mean, I think, you know, in the book that Alexandra and I have coming out on abortion, we have a chapter on how abortions corrupted our political parties. And we just go through kind of chapter and verse, all of these pro-life Democrats who, as they grew in office, discovered they were more willing to be an elected Democrat than being pro-life. Catholic Democrats used to be a thing.

Pro-life Democrats used to be a thing. Now they're endangered species. And you have to ask yourself, like, for what? especially as some of these elected officials are nearing the end of life, you know, you pray that they have a deathbed conversion because it's just, when you ask you, how do you make sense of it? It's just really tragic. It's tragic. It's tragic. It's tragic for the political process and tragic for them. You think what you, so you've thrown away your principles, your beliefs, hundreds of thousands of babies per year, upwards of a million, and possibly your souls. For what? For what? For what? For what? Especially. now when there's such a major victory for life. Ryan, have to leave it there. Everyone go find Ryan T. Anderson all over the interwebs and the social medias. Ryan, thank you so much for coming on. Sure, thank. Thank you. Remember that date, June 24th, 2022. Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization already etched in history. Already, we can know this already today, that this will be regarded

as one of the most important decisions in the history of the United States Supreme Court. And I think it's really important to thank two people. We should thank many, many people. I mean, there are too many people to name. All of the activists who have worked tirelessly, often behind the scenes, for years in the pro-life movement, who have not been discouraged, starting in 1973 with the huge gut punch of Planned Parenthood v. Casey in the early 90s and on and on. They've continued to work tirelessly. Obviously the courage of the justices. These are justices who at this very moment are having their lives threatened by wackos and lunatics and left-wing political activists, but I repeat myself. There are people passing out palm cards right now

with the personal home addresses of the conservative judges. This is really dangerous. Someone tried to assassinate Ret Kavanaugh. I know that disappeared from the news, and so you probably haven't heard about that if you've been listening to shows other than this one and a handful of other conservative shows. But there have been threats against Alito,

against Amy Barrett, against Kavanaugh and the rest of them. But the two people that we really have to thank are Mitch McConnell. Why Mitch McConnell? Is Mitch McConnell the most personally pro-life man in America? I don't know. I always sort of doubted it.

I don't know what his personal views are all that much, but I do know he held that seat open. When Scalia died at the end of the Obama administration, Mitch McConnell held firm, held that seat open. Had he not held that seat open, we would not have this ruling today. It's a 5-4 ruling. 6-3 to uphold the Mississippi law, but it's 5-4 to overrule Roe v. Wade. five, four, to save hundreds of thousands of babies per year. Hundreds of thousands of babies per year will be saved immediately as a direct result of this ruling.

Okay. Mitch McConnell deserves a lot of credit for that. And then, of course, Donald Trump. Donald Trump, you can't give him too much credit for this. You can't over-credit him for this. This guy, because if McConnell had held the seat, and then Trump had lost, wouldn't matter. If McConnell held the seat and Trump had gone squishy on the judges, wouldn't matter.

But McConnell held the seat, Trump did what he said he would do. He made a promise to appoint a conservative constitutionalist judge vetted by the conservative legal movement from that shortlist that he had announced. And he followed through with that. And it worked out. And it gave us this major victory. and the guy deserves so much credit. Whatever you think about Donald Trump,

I really like the guy. I know some people don't like him. He's a polarizing figure. And they don't like the way he tweets sometimes. And they don't like some of the things he did in office. Sure. With this ruling, Donald Trump has become, no matter what else he did in his presidency,

he has become one of the greatest and most significant presidents in American history. That's done. That's just, that's over now. Now, his name is etched in the history books as one of the greatest presidents because of the importance of this ruling. Today, there were children scheduled to die in Louisiana, in Kentucky, in Texas, in Missouri, elsewhere as well. Liberal journalists are tweeting this out, pulling their hair out of their head. they say, oh no, now abortion is legal, as illegal, rather, in these states. What does that mean?

What that means is that a year from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now, 20 years from now, there are going to be people walking around this country who are alive because their mother was scheduled to go in to an abortion mill today, June 24th, 2022. And those kids were scheduled to be killed, and because of this decision, they were not killed. And in some cases, maybe mothers will go elsewhere to have the abortions, but in a lot of cases, they won't. They'll just have the babies. You've actually already seen this happen. Washington Post ran a big article on this. A young lady who found out she was pregnant, but then it was right before an abortion ban went into effect, and it was too late. And the girl,

gave birth to these twins. And the article, I guess, was supposed to be upset about this. I guess was supposed to tug on our heartstrings and make us think that it would be better if she had killed the babies. But I'm not so sure. Maybe there was a secret conservative, a secret pro-lifer at the Washington Post, because it showed a picture of the babies. And at the very end, the young lady said, oh, now, seeing my babies, loving my babies, oh my gosh, they're the greatest thing in the world. Could you imagine it be so terrible if I had killed them through abortion? Those babies are alive because of that law. There will be lots and lots of human beings, people that you meet, people that you work with,

people that run for office, people in this country who are alive because this happened on this day. 850,000 some on babies are killed every year through abortion. This decision, unfortunately, doesn't outlaw abortion nationwide, but it is going to deal a huge blow to the abortion regime in America. And hundreds of thousands of babies per year will live because of this decision. It's astounding. It's certainly astounding enough that it would make me want to go out and do a second show today. And it makes me want to celebrate even more. And I think we should all celebrate. We should give thanks to God and we should pray. We should hug our loved ones. and we should really have a moment of gratitude and joy.

Our country got a lot better today. I'm Michael Knowles. This is Michael Nulls.