now it's time for the last word with
lawrence o'donnell good evening lawrence
good evening rachel and what we're
witnessing tonight is the loss
of a right the loss of a constitutional
right and that is something that you and
i have never born witness to in our
lives if you pointed out if you're
50 years old or younger
in this country if you're a woman
50 years old or younger in this country
you've had a right throughout your life
to abortion services a constitutional
right to that decision
that is what is being taken away here a
constitutional right
and i will just say in terms the real
world impact on
women's lives congressman jamie raskin
raised a really good point about the
reasoning in this opinion which again is
a draft opinion but the way that this is
written
it undoes a woman's right to decide
whether or not she's going to carry a
pregnancy to term but this also
absolutely creates the circumstance in
which it is possible for them to
undermine to overturn a related ruling
called griswald
which is about the right of people to
have access to contraception even if
certain state legislatures decide that
contraception is evil or that we want to
call contraception abortion or we want
to otherwise make it unavailable to
people it's a straight line from this
ruling not only to banning abortion
instantly and potentially nationally but
to also
preventing
americans from accessing
birth control uh in a ruling that is
argued along the same lines as the um
the established precedents that are that
are struck down in this opinion
it's just a it's a fundamentally
different world if those if this happens
and included in this fundamentally
different world is what the other part
of what we're experiencing tonight is
minority government minority ruled
government and the supreme court is the
most incredible exemplar of that you
have these uh judges appointed to the
supreme court by two presidents
who did not win the most votes in their
presidential election george w bush
appointed the justice who wrote this
opinion he did not win the most votes in
his presidential election but he won the
electoral college and then you have
donald trump appointing three of these
deciding justices he did not come close
to winning the most votes but he got the
presidency in this country because of
this capacity for minority rule in our
government which is what the united
states senate is about every day of
every year
more people vote for democrats for the
united states senate but republicans end
up either in control of it with fewer
people voting for them for those seats
or as we see now in a 50 50 position
this is a minority controlled government
this is the product of that
it also raises the question as to the
you know the
how the court is perceived i mean the
reason that starry decisis is something
that you know it's not maybe what you
learn day one of kid law school but it's
maybe day two
is that part of the legitimacy of the
court is that the court compounds the
idea of the legitimacy of the rule of
law by respecting past precedent
and to have
thrown out
sort of sue established super precedence
in casey and and in row here uh the way
this opinion is this draft opinion is
written um is to say that there is
nothing that any court has previously
done there's nothing that any supreme
court has previously arrived at um that
is
that deserves respect
um and even with you know as you say
justices who are appointed by you know
by presidents who didn't win the popular
vote and in one case by president who
had already been impeached
it doesn't matter because once you've
got power you can use it to wreck
everything
because starry decisis doesn't exist and
whatever we say has to go goes and if
we've got the power to do it we're going
to do it and how are you going to how
are you gonna how are you gonna respond
um
it's uh it's a different
it's a it's a it's a challenge on the
legitimacy uh and credibility claims of
the court that implies that that battle
is over that they're no longer fighting
that they're no longer trying to appeal
to people respecting them for their work
and let's consider what this
republican-controlled court does not
respect
they do not respect
the in-effect republican-controlled
court that wrote roe versus wade it was
a 7-2 decision 49 years ago and five
five of the deciding justices in favor
of roe versus wade were republican
appointed
supreme court justices and in the last
week or so there's been a very intense
discussion especially in the world of
twitter about how much uh the the
democratic party has moved to the left
in recent years or how much the
republican party has moved to the right
there is no better demonstration
the about the extreme direction toward
the right that the republican party has
moved when you look at the five
republican appointed justices in 1973
who voted for roe versus wade in a total
of seven uh justices uh and then you see
these five tonight possibly six in the
end but five as of tonight
voting to repeal it completely repeal it
and
insulting as much as they possibly can
the justices who decided it
yeah
and also i mean just the the 30 000 foot
view i mean
it's 2022 and america is going to outlaw
abortion
mexico just legalized it you know what
i'm saying like there's there's a
there's a way in which the
fast retrograde politics of the new
right um
puts us on a very different timeline
than the way that we think of ourselves
as a as a mature democracy um
but you know this is this is a decision
i think the the repercussions in terms
of how this reporting happened and how
this draft came to light we've only
started to understand the basic
implications of that and the kind of
radicalism that you're that you're
describing uh but what this means for
for women in the very short term will
not be theoretical this will be a very
practical thing and this will change the
lives of
women um
women of every station but particularly
women without resources
you know marginalized women and women
who are who are poor and can't work
around the law in a case like this this
will fundamentally change american
women's lives this year this generation
and permanently because decisions that
are forced by the government around
whether or not a woman gives birth or
something that resonates for your entire
life and for generations in terms of
your opportunities
and that harm will start today
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