Gloria Allred joins us live now. She was the attorney
for Jane Roe in that 1973 case Gloria, you have call
the leaked draft opinion quote catastrophic. Do you
believe the court will actually go through with this
Yes, I do. There may be some change in the language of
this draft opinion that was leaked, but I do believe
that there will be sufficient votes to support a
majority opinion, which will most likely be Released in
the next six weeks or perhaps by at least by the end of
june uh, and that roe v wade will be reversed. Not just
modified, not just chipped away at, but completely
struck down. And this is catastrophic to the lives and
the health and the safety of women and girls. You've
told your own personal story of having an abortion
after you were raped at gunpoint. Well, before roe, you
say it almost killed you. If states with so called
trigger laws begin to ban abortions. What kind of
choices will women in those states be faced with They
will be faced with choices. Similar to what I
experienced when I was in my 20s, which was in the
1960s. And when I was raped at gunpoint in Mexico whe
I was there on a vacation and returned to Califo
and it was not legal for, uh, a doctor or a nurse, a
health care provider to provide a legal abortion in
California. Uh, and uh, so I had to find a back alley a
person to do it. If I paid him and I did pay him and he
did it. And uh, then I was left in a bathtub
hemorrhaging soaked in my own blood Developed 106
Degree fever at some point. Uh, an ambulance was called,
I was taken to the hospital and uh packed in ice and a
nurse said to me and I, and I relate this in my
documentary which is on netflix. So streaming called
seeing all red. But at some point a nurse came over to
me and said, I hope you've learned a lesson or this
will teach you a lesson. And she was obviously anti
choice. And uh, she knew that I had the abortion. And
because the only way you could get into the hospital,
you couldn't get it in there to have an abortion. You
could only get in there if you were hemorrhaging and
almost dying from an illegal abortion. And so she said,
I hope this teaches you a lesson. It did teach me a
lesson, but not the one she wanted me to learn. And the
lesson is that abortion must be safe, legal affordable
and available. And I have been fighting for pro choice
Ever since then. And even more so since I became a
lawyer 47 years ago because I know what's at stake.
I've suffered it. I almost died millions of women
either died or were maimed or suffered from illegal
abortions before roe v wade. Same thing is going to
happen. Now. Half the states are going to criminalize
that some already have others have trigger laws, which
means that once roe V wade is overturned, those laws
will go into effect on july 1st or august 1st in many
states. So half the states will make it illegal and the
other half will behave in states like California and
new york. And there will be many women who will try to
come to those states where abortion is still legal. But
many poor women and young women and women of color and
rural women will not have the money to come to another
state where they can get a legal abortion. They might
try a medication, abortion like take a pill. But many
states, even that is going to be illegal to self induce
an abortion. So these women who don't even have bus
fare in some cases, they are gonna put their lives,
they're going to be at risk. They will try to get an
abortion and many of them will be harmed as a result.
And Gloria, your former client norma McCorvey aka jane
roe changed her stance along the way, working with
opponents of abortion. She later said before she died,
she was still for abortion rights and that she was paid
to switch sides with all that's happening right now.
What we're talking about, Do you think she would still
go through with that case again, would it all be worth
it Just to see what we're seeing right now. This ca
potentially overturned decades later Yeah, jane meaning
norma McCorvey her actual name was a very complicated
woman. I helped her to have a voice to be pro choice
and speak out which he wanted to do. And she did it for
a number of years. And then she did receive a lot of
economic support to be kind. I don't know why it should
be done, but I'm being kind from the anti choice side.
And she switched sides and became an anti choice
advocate. But she did make that deathbed confession,
to speak on tape before she died to say that she had
always been pro choice. Uh, and that was normal. And
she even continued to be in contact with me when she
was anti choice. But of course I kept and still keep
all of her communications with me confidential. And she
knew that I support her right to choose or not to
choose abortion because that's what pro choice means.
Whereas the anti choice side doesn't believe that a
woman should be trusted with her choice, that she
should have a right to choose. And uh, so that's
different. But the point is this ending legal abortion
doesn't end abortion. Just end safe and legal abortions.
So now we're gonna have, you know, unsafe abortion
And I believe it's not really just about abortion.
There's a race to control women By states that they're
competing to see who can endanger a woman's life more.
Some states will endanger them at 15 weeks by making
them, you know, have the choice to get illegal
abortions. Then others know we want to endanger them
even more. We'll do it in six weeks. Come on, let's
call it. What it is. The very strong base of the
Republican Party is men. And like the main base of the
Democratic Party is women. And they want and the men
want to control the women's lives. But you know, we
have to get out and we have to, the majority of the
american people in every poll have shown that they
support legal abortion, at least in the first trimester
of a woman's pregnancy. So we have to mobilize voters
so that we can win a national law. As president, b
said today, we need to codify the law. Put this in
plain english, It means passed. The law that's been
passed by the House of Representatives, which is ca
the Women's Health. Let's see, Women's Health
Protection Act, That's what it's called. And uh, but
the United States Senate is not going to pass it.
They're gonna filibuster. It's so they don't have to
vote and we need anti we need to get rid of the anti
choice. United States senators, We need to elect pro
choice United States senators and let's win the
protection back that all women and girls in this nation
deserve Gloria allred thank you so much for your time
tonight. Thank you