- So they did it, they finally did it.
The Supreme Court overturned Roe V. Wade
in a six to three vote today,
with the decision stemming from that case in Mississippi
involving a law in the state
that banned abortion at 15 weeks.
But the law having been challenged
on the grounds that it was against
the Supreme Court precedent on fetal viability,
which is the point when the fetus can live outside the womb
which is usually around 23 weeks.
But that was never really the point.
Mississippi had clear intent here,
take advantage of the conservative packed Supreme Court
and undo Roe and as of today,
that is exactly what they got.
With the justices voting six to three,
though Chief Justice John Roberts wrote
a concurring opinion saying
that he only agreed with upholding the Mississippi law
and opposed overruling Roe altogether.
But in the majority opinion justice Samuel Alito wrote,
"The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion."
Alito's opinion going on to say,
"Abortion presents a profound moral question.
The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens
of each state from regulating or prohibiting abortion.
Roe and Casey arrogated that authority.
We now overrule those decisions and returned that authority
to the people in their elected representatives."
And if this opinion sounds familiar to you
it's because many of the key passages
in Alito's final decision were copied
almost word for word from the draft
that was leaked back in May.
This including one of the main overarching arguments
that Alito made, which was that
"The Constitution makes no reference to abortion,
and no such right is implicitly protected
by any constitutional provision."
With him claiming that because of that,
Roe needed to be deeply rooted
in the nation's history and traditions
which he argued abortion was not
because it had been criminalized until just 50 years ago.
With the opinion continuing,
"All in all, Roe's reasoning was exceedingly weak,
and academic commentators, including those who agreed
with the decision as a matter of policy,
were unsparing in their criticism."
Alito calling Roe
"egregiously wrong and deeply damaging" saying that,
"Roe's constitutional analysis was far
outside the bounds of any reasonable interpretation
of the various constitutional provisions to
which it vaguely pointed."
As far as the dissenting opinion,
we saw Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan, write,
"Respecting a woman as an autonomous being
and granting her full equality
meant giving her substantial choice
over this most personal and most consequential
of all life decisions,"
and saying that the Supreme Court now says,
"That from the very moment of fertilization
a woman has no rights to speak of.
A state can force her to bring a pregnancy to term
even at the steepest personal and familial cost."
And going on to say, "Some states will not stop there.
Perhaps in the wake of today's decision,
a state law will criminalize the woman's conduct too,
incarcerating or fining her
for daring to seek or obtain an abortion.
And as Texas has recently shown,
a state can turn neighbor against neighbor."
And on the note of this is not going to stop here.
You have the justices saying this,
I've been saying this for a long time,
and we're already seeing it.
Justice Clarence Thomas filed a concurring opinion
where he wrote, "The Supreme Court should reconsider all
of this court's substantive due process precedence
including Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell."
Right we're already seeing a conservative justice saying,
hey, protection about contraception, same sex relationships,
same sex marriages, all on the table.
All those could be part of what is stripped away next.
And that's just with the stuff that is not abortion.
As far as abortion, they're not done.
Like I've talked about with you on this show,
we've already seen conservatives saying hey, let's try
and set up laws where people can't leave our state
to go to a state where it is legal to get an abortion.
How would we do that?
What would that look like?
Nancy Pelosi today saying hey, watch out
the Republicans are going to try and do a nationwide ban.
- The Republicans are plotting a nationwide abortion ban.
They they cannot be allowed to have a majority
in the Congress to do that, but that's their goal.
And if you read and again, we're all studying all this
but you read what is in the, very clear.
One of the justices had his own statement.
It's about contraception, in vitro fertilization,
family planning.
That is all what will spring
from their decision that they made today.
- And that's not some crazy thought that they would do this.
Fuck, I mean, you had House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy
pretty much confirming that today.
- As encouraging as today's decision is,
our work is far from done.
Americans remain one of only seven countries on earth
that allow elective abortions in the third trimester.
Of those seven countries that America's one of them,
there's two others, China and North Korea.
That is radical.
The House Democrats continue to support it
against the wishes of the American people.
- And while obviously the most important thing is
how this is going to impact people
in the now and the near future and moving forward,
one of the big questions we're seeing more and more is
how is this going to affect the midterms?
Because according to polling, a healthy majority
in this country believe that women
should have access to abortions.
And you're seeing the Republican leaders
the McConnells, the McCarthys of the world
saying mission accomplished, but there's more to do,
give us more power and we'll keep pushing and pushing
and pushing and make sure we keep
the Supreme Court locked in the way it is now.
Right. Does that have an impact?
Does this make single issue voters that are going to go
to the polls in the midterms?
When, I mean the Democrats have been polling
fucking horribly and that's a real question,
because among the responses that we're seeing,
we're seeing some that you would think are unlikely,
like Dave Portnoy of Barstool Sports.
While seen by many as a Trumpy conservative
putting out a video today saying, "What the fucks happening
in our country?"
- To me, this is just pure insanity, pure insanity.
We are going backwards in time.
We are literally going backwards in time.
It makes no sense how anybody thinks
it's their right to tell a woman what to do with her body.
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.
I know people will be like, well no,
it's a constitutional issue.
They're just giving it to the states.
Well, like what, 20 states are saying
they're going to overturn it right away.
And what if you're poor in that state?
And you can't go to another state and things like that.
It's just nuts to me.
Not to mention the same people are saying, you know,
they want to take it away and overturn it
are also like got to protect guns because the Constitution.
At what point do you look at the Constitution and say,
"Hey this was written by people who had slaves."
Maybe not everything is exactly to a T in the Constitution,
like a million years from now
you're going to use the document written in the,
it is just nuts.
In what world, the world evolves.
People evolve, technology evolves, you got to evolve.
You can't stick with this document and look at that
and be like, that's the end all be all.
It's literally crazy pills.
This is coming from somebody who consistently is like
the US is the best country in the world by a mile.
I still believe it, but we're going backwards,
and the left, and the right suck, so fucking bad.
Like, the left fucking hates me.
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.
What's next, same sex marriage?
Like what is next? It's insane.
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.
- And with all of that I'll say
it's really notable that Portnoy did that,
considering that, like, if you look in his comments
he has a lot of conservative followers
that are not on board with what he's saying.
And so the question is out there,
do conservatives lose people that are not a part of the,
that kind of the Christian, right?
Do they, in the next elections,
begrudgingly vote against Republicans
until they change their policy?
I personally would say, I don't believe so
but all this talk of a nationwide ban
where you don't even get to say
that it's just a state's right issue,
that could potentially change heart and minds.
Also, just so there's no confusion,
I think that women should have the right.
I'm not going to get on a soapbox
and give you some like, very flowery speech.
I just, that's the way that I see the world
and that's what I think is right.
And personally, I will vote against any pro-birther
who supported the overturning of Roe V Wade.
And that's where I'll leave it as far as me,
short and sweet.
And the next thing that I was going to talk about
was this reaction, that reaction
because everyone's firing off.
You're likely scrolling through social media right now,
so you're seeing all that.
So what I want to talk about last is,
what is going to happen now?
Right, what is your today like,
what is the soon to be immediate future going to be,
how does this affect you?
And a lot of that depends initially on where you live.
In the short term, very few states are affected,
but like we've talked about in the past,
there are about a dozen or so states
that have so-called trigger laws, right?
Anti-abortion laws that go into effect
when Roe is overturned.
And so far, we've seen Missouri
become the first state to do so,
with Attorney General Eric Schmidt signing a legal opinion
to implement their ban.
It's also expected that South Dakota, Louisiana,
and Kentucky will soon follow.
There are even states like Alabama,
which has had an abortion ban on the books for decades,
it seems to have now gone into effect again.
But reportedly could also be months
before other trigger law states follow suit
as they navigate the legal stuff
before committing to a ban.
Then you have other states
like Georgia, South Carolina, Indiana, and Ohio,
all of them are likely to ban abortions sometimes soon
or will have versions that are far more restrictive
than was previously allowed.
And then you have places like Kansas
which had already announced that it was going to be
the first state to have a referendum on abortion in August.
And then finally you have the states that have
explicitly protected the right to an abortion.
You're talking about states like New York
Massachusetts, Oregon, California, and others.
As a matter of fact, California lawmakers
just passed a bill yesterday that even expanded protections
by shielding people from abortion related civil suits
brought on by people in other states.
Right, so if you're from Texas and go to California
to get an abortion, the abortion provider in California
is protected from any lawsuits brought on
by Texas's backward fucking law.
But then again, there are a lot of states
that are going to kind of drift along until lawmakers
or voters decide to more clearly fall one way or the other.
Also with this, you have people saying hey,
we need a codify Roe on a national level.
To which, normally I would say that's probably
dead in the water because you have, you know
Manchin and Sinema in the Senate.
We even had Manchin today saying
that he was deeply disappointed
by the decision and would vote to codify Roe.
But it's also easy for him to say that, because he knows
that he won't vote against destroying the filibuster.
And so he gets to say that he stands for one thing,
but actually do nothing.
But ultimately that's where I'm going to leave it for now.
Obviously this is a developing situation,
who knows what's going to happen later today,
over the weekend, at the very least we'll get back together
on Monday.
Since YouTube often suppresses these kind of videos
on controversial topics I'll say, follow me on Twitter,
over at @PhillyD to see if I post more videos
over the weekend, but where I'll leave this is,
after this weekend, specifically after today
there is no doubt that we all live
in a different America than we did last week.
Being an American stands for something different now
You have people on the right like McCarthy
who are happy about what that means.
You have those, like Portnoy, that are confused
by what that means.
And you have people like AOC furious
about what that means and saying today,
"Overturning Roe and outlawing abortions
will never make them go away.
It only makes them more dangerous,
especially for the poor and marginalized.
People will die because of this decision.
And we will never stop until abortion rights are restored
in the United States of America."
And today is day zero of waiting to see
if that day ever comes.
And if so, how far will the pendulum swing first?
My name's Philip DeFranco.
You've just been filled in. I love your faces.
Stay safe out there and I'll see you next time.