good evening everyone we begin the
readout tonight with the frightening
truth about where we are headed post row
as the public outright continues to grow
and as protests intensify over the
weekend abortion rights protesters
demonstrated outside the homes of
justice brett kavanaugh chief justice
john roberts which even some democrats
joined right-wingers in criticizing i
mean i suppose if the justices don't
like the first amendment they could just
drive to another state where the
legislature has determined that the
constitutional right to privacy applies
right i mean that is what they're
telling women to do if they want to
control their own bodies right
but i digress
tonight i would like to draw your
attention to a rather telling footnote
in justice samuel alito's treatise on
stripping the rights of half our
population by overturning roe
which caught a bit of online online
attention this weekend now in in this
footnote alito cites a cdc report from
2008 and it notes quote nearly 1 million
women were seeking to adopt children in
2002 whereas the
domestic supply of infants relinquished
at birth or within the first month of
life and available to be adopted had
become virtually non-existent unquote
the domestic supply of infants
well that line caught some diligent
twitter sins that's weird kind of creepy
but in fact alito's citation backs up an
argument that was pushed by fellow
religious ultra-conservative justice amy
coney barrett during her questioning in
the dobbs v mississippi case last
december
after barrett noted that both row and
casey emphasized the burdens of
parenting and focuses on the
consequences of parenting and
obligations of motherhood she asked why
don't the safe haven laws take care of
that problem
safe haven laws of course refer to laws
in several states that allow people to
drop off infants that they don't want at
firehouses and police stations and other
safe locations without legal
consequences like being charged with
abandonment it is in short the forced
birth adoption option
and there is a long history of the
christian right seeking to do that to
make abortion illegal but to push women
who don't want to be pregnant to stay
pregnant anyway and give the resulting
infant up for adoption long history of
that and of pushing evangelicals to have
big families and to adopt on mass take
the betsy devos funded bethany christian
services scrutinized for allegedly
trying to resettle migrant children who
arrived in the u.s unaccompanied or who
were stolen from their parents by the
trump administration's child separation
policy to put them into christian
adoptive homes something the
organization vehemently denied
less in doubt the recent case in march
of this year of matt shea a far-right
former washington state representative
who was accused of domestic terrorism in
relation to allegedly helping to plan
the 2016 bundy ranch standoff with the
federal government in the state of
nevada remember that
well he was in poland in march trying to
secure adoptions for more than 60
ukrainian children that he arrived from
arrived with from across the border
now of course shutting down roe would
increase the number of domestic
available children overlooking the fact
that
using women against their will as
incubators for adoptive families is
literally the basis of the handmaid's
tale there's also alito's other fixation
on what was and wasn't legal during the
19th century
he notes that by the time the 14th
amendment was ratified in 1868
three quarters of states had made
abortion a crime
and in yet another footnote he writes in
relation to massachusetts's now defunct
1845 law
case law he said held that abortion was
allowed when according to the judgment
of physicians in the relevant community
the procedure was necessary to preserve
the woman's life or or
her physical or
emotional health
now it is telling that alito notes the
timing of the 14th amendment because
when citing the legality of abortion for
the physical and emotional health of
women that well that could only have
meant certain women
because in 1845 enslaved women had no
protection under law and were not
treated as citizens or really even as
people
it was indeed the 14th amendment that
granted at least on paper citizenship
and rights to the formerly enslaved
women for whom the reality of abortion
had a very different significance in
bondage
the college of charleston notes that
enslaved women knew that enslavers
valued and depended upon their ability
to bear children and to increase the
slave population
with this understanding enslaved women
participated in acts of resistance
specific to the labor demanded of them
from avoiding sexual intercourse to
terminating pregnancy to taking the
lives of their own infants
that includes the very real tragedy of
margaret garner
who took the life of her own daughter
rather than subject her to the horrors
of slavery
that slavery is the ins that story is
the inspiration behind tony morrison's
beloved which goes a long way toward
explaining this big push to ban that
book in schools and libraries
and as the aclu points out just like
slavery maximizing wealth and
consolidating power motivated the
anti-abortion enterprise
republican politicians meanwhile are
making clear that they are not finished
trying to consolidate power
by not just simply overturning roe
they're making clear that they would
like to go further
and mississippi governor tate reeves
evaded all sorts of questions this
weekend while refusing to rule out
banning
contraception
while senate minority leader mitch
mcconnell said a national abortion ban
would be possible would be possible
if roe is overturned joining me now is
anthea butler chair of the religious
studies department at the university of
pennsylvania and author of white
evangelical racism the politics of
morality in america and former rnc chair
michael steele who is an msnbc political
analyst thank you both for being here
anthony i do want to start with you
because i went into a very deep world
about the history of enslaved women and
abortion over the weekend and the
reality is it was an act of resistance
and it was also an act of desperation
for a lot of women who would take roots
things that were passed down to them
their knowledge from um the the you know
from the continent from africa that
their you know mothers and four mothers
knew about certain herbs you could take
to abort and they did it because slavery
was worse than death and i know that
there the anti-education republicans
would like to sort of portray slavery as
this benign institution that wasn't so
bad the people would rather die would
rather have their children die and would
abort on their own to stop creating more
product more available domestic supply
of children
what do you make of this fixation
that samuel alito has with that era but
in his mind
that 19th century era was the good old
days
well for samuel alito i'm pretty sure
that he would like to be able to sell
babies again if he possibly could but
let's let's take it back for a minute
and talk about the 19th century because
i think this is really important to part
of what's going on this idea about
family and the way that family gets
constructed for evangelicals really
starts in the 19th century
post-reconstruction period where the
deification of white women and the
protection of white women comes out of a
fear of rape by black men and we know
that this is you know a lie but on the
other hand i think what's important here
is to say two things number one black
women were never afforded these kinds of
protections because they were always in
peril and their children were always in
peril and their children could be sold
from them at any particular time so it's
no surprise that they would want to have
their children not grow up in slavery
and take their own lives instead of
letting their children be sold by a
slave master that's number one but let
me put a finer point on it because you
showed a picture of a plantation i'm not
sure that everybody knows where that
place plantation is it's called oak
alley in louisiana when i visited that
plantation the reason why i recognize
this picture is because it's a very
arresting one the oaks go all the way up
to the plantation you get a list of the
slaves on the back porch of that
plantation and many of those slaves were
mulattos how did they get there was
because of rape by the white slave
masters so i think that this whole thing
that alito is alluding to
in this document is about two things
number one wanting to make sure that the
white personhood of babies is preserved
that's number one and that they will be
protected and number two that they're
going to be enough children so that if
you want to cross-racially adopt you can
adopt and that doesn't matter if
somebody has a baby and you're not able
to get an abortion
you know and
and listen mike michael steele my friend
here's the challenge you know if you if
you go back and you read you know the
old testament of the bible or you know
which is the same as you know reading um
the jewish bible the torah you know
there these traditions all the abrahamic
traditions are they all share books they
share abrahamic story lines and
characters and etc
the idea of a handmaid is in there
so you know when margaret atwood wrote
this book it it she didn't take it out
of whole class she took it from old
biblical stories and the idea that you
know the the woman who was barren you
know this was an agrarian society 1600
to 900 bc
where being quote-unquote baron they
always described it to the woman they
never described it to the man until very
recently um was horrible it was sort of
a curse from god and so you would take
your handmaid your servant
in in those cases and then they would
have the baby this is not a consensual
situation this is a servant i feel like
trying to ground american law
in that kind of
not even new testament christianity but
old testament christianity
that is a frightening
start and you don't it doesn't end with
just abortion you now have mississippi
tate reeves the governor there on state
of the union sort of ah you know we may
maybe i'm trying to ban plan b and iuds
that may be next because a lot of these
same evangelicals believe those things
are abortivations marcia blackburn
opposing the griswold decision that's
the one about contraception so they're
saying that's also wrong we decided you
have this guy in arizona blake masters
tucson based venture capitalist he's
peter thiel's guy he says oh no oh yeah
we want to go further we want to
overturn griswold that's the plan that's
the uh contraception one mitch mcconnell
singh national band abortion entirely
possible this is the definition michael
of a slippery slope is it not
it is um on a number of levels and to
your first point it is it is much more
difficult to reconcile this emerging uh
theocracy uh within this you know uh
conservative evangelical slash political
space
against the new testament uh story
against the new testament background um
because it doesn't align the the the new
testament narrative is very different
where the the christ
uh
embraced everyone so the the prostitute
the center the the tax collector was a
representation
of all those great sins that were
condemned in the old testament um christ
talked about the fixation of the rule
and and the order um
to the to the extent that it ignored the
person
uh and that's exactly what we see now
emerging in this space um and as someone
who is pro-life have always had a
problem with the ignoring of the human
person part of this yeah um
you you and this idea that it's a
zero-sum
um situation particularly in the
draconian laws that you're seeing now
uh that say we won't even acknowledge
the you know the you know we want to do
away with the child conceived in in we
won't allow that to happen in rape or
incest
um and and so there is this this sense
that
um
the the party that's now
trying to write this new narrative
um is is doing so and in this basis is
going to be tried to be put in this sort
of old testament space to make those
folks who
probably would have some problem
otherwise feel better about where this
is going
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