But that said, right now apparently the Democrats are leading in
the what's considered like the Generic Congressional Comparison.
That even though I didn't know what had happened or
what was going to happen, I at least felt like I could
have had a choice in what would happen moving forward.
And whether my values and whether my my personal
perspective led me to carry a pregnancy or
not is no one else's business but
my own and it could have been my choice.
>> That is a representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez in Instagram live yesterday
talking about in the aftermath of this incredibly tragic, horrific experience,
at least knowing that in a country that at that point at least cared about people's
reproductive rights.
She had a choice that if she needed to get an abortion,
she could know the situation is changing rapidly.
We're waiting for the Scotus's decision on Roe V Wade to come out and so
she is able to connect with people who might be affected by this
based on her own experience.
And we want to give you a little bit more of what she had to say so
let's roll that video.
>> After you experience something that traumatizing,
If you're a person that menstruates ,your cycle and this happened to me.
Your cycle can be really, really thrown off because of
the trauma and the stress of being assaulted,
you may miss a cycle, you may not even be pregnant.
Well, I remember when that happened,
the horror that I had felt and I felt really alone.
For context, I grew up in a very religious household.
That is why these choices are very deeply personal and that's why it is a choice for
every person.
But I remember in the moment after what happened, I was just so horrified.
What I do remember in that moment I had felt like no matter what had happened,
I at least had a choice in what happened to my life after a choice was
taken away from me.
That's the point is that your future and your life can belong to you.
>> And so look for a long time we've said that representative Ocasio Cortez
has a very strong skill at being able to connect with people understanding
how politics actually affects people's lives.
And I think that the contrast couldn't be more significant that you have
all of these people on the right on either cable news or on the political side 90% of
whom are men who don't seem to know about any of this care even less than they know.
And a lot of people are very nervous in states across the country, many of
which and we'll get into the numbers in a little bit face the potential for
reproductive rights to vanish in a second.
If the decision comes out, their very scared and they're looking for
people who seem to care.
The democrats have not done a great job since the leak on the third in reassuring
people that they take this seriously but I think that videos like that can help.
>> Yeah, the one thing I'll say is that the democrats have done a good job overall
in telling their personal stories led by a lot of progressives and
here I'll give Pramila Jayapal credit too.
And I think it normalizes these choices that people are making.
And I think that you shouldn't underestimate how important that is
because I know I saw the pulling on, for example, when we were fighting for
gay marriage to be legal.
If you knew someone in your personal life who was gay,
I don't remember the exact numbers now, but the number, your turns for
gay marriage and gay rights overall goes up went up by a stunning number.
I forget it was a 30, 40 50 points, right?
If you think you don't know any gay people, you're like, who cares?
Take away their rights, don't know way on marriage.
But man between a man, your cousin is, your brother is, your sister is, all of
a sudden you're like, no okay, yeah, that's somebody I can relate to, right?
And so people sharing their stories and
people go, okay.
Maybe like because my whole life guys,
abortion has been painted by most people like not just Republicans, but
Democrats playing defense going, it's it's good, it should be really rare.
I mean, it's awful but we should have the choice to do it rare,
it should be super rare, right?
And by the media is like something horrific.
And so my wife's from Taiwan originally, so I now know, I mean I already knew
a ton of Chinese folks growing up Chinese Americans now I know way more.
And so the reason I'm telling that is because when you talk to people from Asia,
abortion is not a moral issue at all, they're completely flummoxed by America.
They're like why are you guys think that like knee surgeries evil?
I don't get it like that, this is the weirdest thing they've ever seen, right.
And so the reason why we have abortion is like, my God,
it's because the media told us it was and everybody, everybody in politics and
media posts all forever our entire lives about how bad a decision.
I mean you could make the decision maybe, but it's a really bad decision, right?
And so now these women coming and going no it's not a bad decision and no it makes
sense under certain circumstances I think makes a giant difference.
>> Absolutely.
And you heard Barbara Lee speak about her abortion that she had to get in Mexico
because that was the closest and
safest place that she could access it back in the day.
And so we're headed back to that time of a lot of people crossing the border,
especially in cities in states like Texas to try and seek safe abortions in Mexico.
Think about that, right?
And we're told, yeah, everything's backwards down there.
No, actually it's not cuz there's actually better reproductive care than there is in
some place in the United States.
I think AOC speaking about it, normalizes it and
it seems obviously the fact that she was a victim of sexual assault is hard enough.
The fact that then she was unsure of whether she was pregnant.
And when you say you miss a cycle, right?
You're talking about eight weeks then maybe before you get your period.
Now the bills that are being passed now are saying, no,
that's already illegal by week nine or week 10 when you know you are or
are not pregnant or even if you do know by then that's already illegal.
So just understanding how soon after how draconian these
bills actually are is incredibly important.
And I just wanna say like Lucy McBath spoke the other day,
representative from Georgia I believe and she also spoke about miscarriages.
So this is not just about abortion and normalizing abortion and
normalizing the fact that we don't have to feel bad if you choose to get an abortion.
But also it's about reproductive health and women's health care or
anyone with a uterus care in general, which can be a miscarriage,
which can be a stillbirth, which can be all the reasons and all the ways.
That if you actually cared about life, you would ensure that over half
the population has access to these basic rights and these basic freedoms.
Yeah.
Yeah. >> Unfortunately something like half
the population might not soon.
It's expected that 25 states will basically
immediately outlaw abortion when the decision finally comes out.
13 different states already have what are considered trigger band so
that they just had passed them and just waited hoping that finally it will happen.
It will immediately become illegal reminder by the way that when they spent
years and years and years passing all these trigger laws and focusing so
intently on it only to then get the league and know that they're about to win.
They then immediately switched into why is everyone freaking out?
Nothing is gonna change,
this isn't a big deal your life is going to be all the same.
We only did decades and decades and decades of activism making that
like the sole focus of our politics but nothing will actually change.
I wanna remind people in case they've forgotten that this is wildly unpopular.
If we could jump to the most recent polls, nearly two and
three Americans oppose overturning Roe V Wade.
In fact more than one out of three, even Republicans do.
And by the way like again, what a reminder that Republicans are so dissimilar from
the rest of the population, like nothing like even independence on this issue.
But that said, right now apparently the Democrats are leading in
the what's considered like the Generic Congressional Comparison.
But that said, right now apparently the Democrats are leading in the what's
considered like the Generic Congressional Comparison.
But that said, right now apparently the Democrats are leading in the what's
considered like the Generic Congressional Comparison.
Like would you vote for a Democrat or a Republican, 47-42?
That is up eight points now from what it was a month ago..
So other things have changed too, this is not the only political development but
it's a significant one and
it seems like it might make a pretty significant difference.
>> Yeah, my theory is that Sam Alito is the one that leaked
the his own draft of this decision.
And so I don't have enough evidence for that for
me to present that as a news story for you guys, that's just my gut, okay.
And then we've explained why in the past.
Because he wants to solidify the most extreme version of this decision and
wants to make sure that others don't back out of voting yes or
in this case no to yes to overturning room, okay.
But in politically it seems to have backfired, right?
And that's why even people like Mitch McConnell is that our war back
backpedaling as soon as this have Ted Cruz talking about.
I mean, it's not that but it's not that important.
I mean, I mean, I wouldn't even talk about it.
That's when you know they're worried to death about it.
And that's when you know that they know 70% of the country's actually left
me on this.
I would argue 70% of the country's left wing on almost all the policies.
She was on a good show to you in the polling, but definitely on this and
even Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell know it.
So AOC also talked about freedom and liberty and there's just no question.
You could say if you're a right wing or you can say no, no,
we should snatch women's bodies because my religious
views on the zygote inside them is more important than their liberty.
But you can't say that you're not taking their freedom away.
You're definitely taking their freedom away.
So please shut your mouth about freedom from now on cuz you don't believe it
at all.
>> And it's our role to reclaim that, it's on the left.
And honestly it's on a what I think needs to be a revitalized abortion movement,
like freedom of access movement that needs to say the word abortion.
And this is from organizers like Liz Winstead, who we've had on the show a lot
who's a homey of TYT and her organization abortion access front is doing trainings.
I believe on July 17th, they're gonna be house parties, everyone can throw one.
So I just wanna shout out this entire summer of resistance and it doesn't matter
who you are, this is everyone's issue, everyone can get involved.
And even if it is something so seemingly small as escorting somebody into a planned
parenthood man that's not small, that's huge.
And so I just wanna caution against despair.
No, we're gonna get loud and more militant and more active and because you're right,
these guys are on their back heels.
They know it's unpopular, they're not doing victory laps, they're trying to
gaslight us about how it's not about freedom and we all know better.
>> Yeah, and the last thing I'll remind everybody and every time we do this story,
because as we said earlier about talking about abortion makes it feel less
wrong, etc.
The Bible is massively pro abortion.
It is indisputably pro abortion.
You should read it as Numbers 5 ,11 through 31, God orders the abortion and
the priest executes the abortion if your wife cheated on you, it is a fact.
So they don't even have the premise right that God is definitely in favor of
abortions