Speaker 1: Hey, it's John Suret. No Daily Show Ears edition this week,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna jam the Weekly Show back onto your
Speaker 1: Ears edition channel. I don't know how this works. We
Speaker 1: plugged into some kind of an outlet USB. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it is, but you're going to hear our
Speaker 1: show this week. It's The Weekly Show with John Stewart.
Speaker 1: It's a podcast we're kind of the theme of it
Speaker 1: is to discuss the kinds of soft threats to our
Speaker 1: democracy that make us vulnerable to these larger threats of
Speaker 1: authoritarians and demagogues and on and on. It's sort of
Speaker 1: the the things within our democracy that cause people to
Speaker 1: believe that the government no longer really represents the best
Speaker 1: interests and the needs of the people that they are
Speaker 1: supposed to be representing, and if they would, we would
Speaker 1: love it. So I hope you do enjoy this latest
Speaker 1: episode and we'll see you next time. Hey, everybody, welcome
Speaker 1: once again to The Weekly Show with John Stewart. I'm
Speaker 1: John Stewart, and I apologize if that was too enthusiastic.
Speaker 1: I have yet to understand in terms of a podcast,
Speaker 1: how to open it up. What level of enthusiasm is
Speaker 1: appropriate for when people are just listening to something, as
Speaker 1: opposed to on cable television when you're coming in and
Speaker 1: very clearly somebody's making popcorn or something else. So that
Speaker 1: may have been too forceful. And I'm sure that our
Speaker 1: grand producers Brittany Memedewick and Lauren Walker, who are here
Speaker 1: with me, would be able to tell you. Last week
Speaker 1: we had our Military Industrial Complex show. We learned shockingly
Speaker 1: that there is waste, fraud, in abuse in a lot
Speaker 1: of the budgets of our military industrial complex. But even
Speaker 1: more interestingly, we learned that our military industrial complex may
Speaker 1: be strategically counterproduc We may actually be sowing more chaos
Speaker 1: than we are not. This week's episode is fascinating, so
Speaker 1: we obviously we have I don't know if you know this,
Speaker 1: maybe this is giving the tea on production on a
Speaker 1: glimpse behind the curtain. We have meetings where we discuss
Speaker 1: what we would like to cover, what we would like
Speaker 1: to talk about. So this week I voted for Celtics Mavericks. Celtics, Mavericks.
Speaker 1: Come on, it's the championship, Tatum Brown. They finally did it,
Speaker 1: but we're going to We're actually going to do abortion.
Speaker 2: Are you suggesting I vedoed you no.
Speaker 1: Why Lauren, how could you come in and a defensive
Speaker 1: posture on that. No, we have it's again we're listen.
Speaker 1: It's an issue that this myth of pristone judgment that
Speaker 1: came down and was promoted as this win for abortion rights,
Speaker 1: but was really kind of a just kicked the can.
Speaker 1: There's so much going on around it, But I think
Speaker 1: more trenchantly, it represents again there is broad support and
Speaker 1: we talked about this for abortion rights for women. There
Speaker 1: is a broad democratic, majoritarian support. But because of the
Speaker 1: way our system is set up, that is under full
Speaker 1: on assault. And it's just one more thing that I
Speaker 1: believe has people feeling that our system is not responsive
Speaker 1: to the needs of the people that it's supposed to represent.
Speaker 1: Would you guys agree.
Speaker 2: With that totally? And I think just you bridge last
Speaker 2: week's episode in this week's episode.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Last week, the House voted on the Defense Bill that
Speaker 2: included a provision blocking abortion coverage from the Pentagon. More specifically,
Speaker 2: they're trying to reverse aventgon policy which allows service members
Speaker 2: to be compensated for time off and travel if they
Speaker 2: need reproductive care. So it just shows you that the
Speaker 2: attacks come from everywhere can fit into any bill.
Speaker 1: Yes, and the extent to which they will not allow
Speaker 1: it anywhere that there is. There is no opportunity small
Speaker 1: enough for them to inject that in there. And that's
Speaker 1: that's for sure. Although to be fair, it's the House
Speaker 1: and their knuckleheads, and my guess is it probably doesn't
Speaker 1: get past the Senate, but who the hell knows anymore
Speaker 1: with the way things are.
Speaker 3: F hope let's they'll try any Let's hope.
Speaker 1: By the way, that was Brittany me metamic which just
Speaker 1: filthy language, just if I may, for those of you,
Speaker 1: for those of you at home who are watching in
Speaker 1: this podcast obviously is geared towards six to eight year olds,
Speaker 1: I just want to let them know that that I
Speaker 1: did not in any way can don't the use of
Speaker 1: the word fuck.
Speaker 3: No, of course I've learned.
Speaker 1: No, you've learned from You've learned from the saltiest speaker
Speaker 1: of all. So I apologize for all of that. But
Speaker 1: our guests this week are are fabulous to discuss it.
Speaker 1: So let's let's get to them right now. Uh hello, okay,
Speaker 1: So we're going to welcome our honored guest, Melissa Murray
Speaker 1: Hear favorite and why you law professor, co host of
Speaker 1: the Strict Scrutiny podcast, which I say slowly so they
Speaker 1: don't bumble it. And Jessica Blelenti. She's the founder of
Speaker 1: Abortion Everyday dot com an author of the forthcoming book Abortion,
Speaker 1: Our Bodies, Their Lives, and the Truths We Use to Win.
Speaker 1: Welcome UH to the conversation. We are discussing ways that
Speaker 1: our system UH is somewhat dysfunctional and leads to a
Speaker 1: certain dissatisfaction UH with the kind of tenets and foundations
Speaker 1: of the democracy, and I think the abortion issue is
Speaker 1: one of those. It's an incredibly complex, complicated issue. There's
Speaker 1: people of good faith on all sides, then there's also
Speaker 1: those that have weaponized it. But it felt like after
Speaker 1: Row the country had found kind of a status quo
Speaker 1: that felt majoritarian to some extent, but the forces of
Speaker 1: the anti abortion movement have chipped away at that through
Speaker 1: legal means. But we also want to get to you know,
Speaker 1: we kind of have this idea that the things they
Speaker 1: can't make illegal, they make impossible, and so I wanted
Speaker 1: to start there. Jessica, if I could I start with you,
Speaker 1: what are some of the things that have been done
Speaker 1: that aren't necessarily legal challenges, but have made it so
Speaker 1: that it's unbelievably difficult.
Speaker 4: I mean, part of the problem is there's so much
Speaker 4: and if it's and they're not, they're not relying on
Speaker 4: any one attack, which is really smart. So if one fails,
Speaker 4: they have a million others in the wings. But I think,
Speaker 4: you know, the things that I'm most worry about are
Speaker 4: travel bands, which I feel like are not getting enough
Speaker 4: media coverage at all. People sort of don't know that
Speaker 4: they exist, or they think that it's something we don't
Speaker 4: have to worry about because right now it's primarily targeted
Speaker 4: towards teenagers and all the little sort of chipping away
Speaker 4: things that they're doing around mifipristone and abortion medication specifically
Speaker 4: because they know that that's how people in anti choice
Speaker 4: states are ending their pregnancies. Right there was some new
Speaker 4: numbers that came out that showed eight thousand people a
Speaker 4: month we're getting pills from pro choice states, and so
Speaker 4: they know that women are getting around their bands. They're
Speaker 4: really pissed off about it, and so they're sort of
Speaker 4: doing everything that they can to, as you said, make
Speaker 4: it impossible to.
Speaker 1: Get Melissa let me ask you. So that that brings
Speaker 1: up how they're doing it lately, So they're setting these boundaries.
Speaker 1: I don't know much about how a travel ban is
Speaker 1: placed legislatively or is enforced and mif of pristone. The
Speaker 1: big news was, oh, that ban failed at the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: But it's not as simple as that is. It was.
Speaker 1: It was actually not a particularly robust victory.
Speaker 5: No, no, I think that's right. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: It's great to be back on.
Speaker 6: Let me add on any time ANYTIMESIA thanking you again.
Speaker 6: The dogma has caught the car on this issue. I
Speaker 6: want to tack back to something that Jessica said before
Speaker 6: Dobbs and the fall of Row. We had become anesthecide
Speaker 6: to the fact that you had to wait two days
Speaker 6: if you wanted an abortion, that you had to travel
Speaker 6: and take time off of work if you wanted to
Speaker 6: do this, and have an ultrasound, and all of these
Speaker 6: things that were medically unnecessary. But we're designed to chill
Speaker 6: individuals from wanting to go through with this and to
Speaker 6: have abortions. We come to accept that as normal. And
Speaker 6: now in this post Row landscape, we are coming to
Speaker 6: accept the fact that a quote unquote normal ban is
Speaker 6: one that prohibits abortion at fifteen weeks. You were exactly
Speaker 6: right about this new Supreme Court opinion that was just released.
Speaker 6: It preserves the status quo, and I just want to
Speaker 6: underscore that that's not great. The status quo is shitty,
Speaker 6: and so it preserves that shitty status quote.
Speaker 5: I think the way to think about that challenge what.
Speaker 1: Is this that when you say the status quote, what
Speaker 1: do you mean by that? As I so the court in.
Speaker 6: This case, this was a challenge to mifipristone, which is
Speaker 6: one of the drugs in the two Drug Medication Abortion Protocol,
Speaker 6: and it was a challenge to the FDA's approval of mephistone,
Speaker 6: and then also to the FDA's regulations that were released
Speaker 6: during the pandemic that made mifipristone easier to access because
Speaker 6: it allowed for its distribution.
Speaker 5: You could do the mayor right, you can tele health
Speaker 5: all of that.
Speaker 6: I think the way for your listeners to think about
Speaker 6: this challenge to mifipristone in those regulations, so that this
Speaker 6: was the anti choice movement's effort to ban abortion in
Speaker 6: blue states where it's accepted, where the constituents want access
Speaker 6: to reproductive freedom. So it is completely anti democratic because
Speaker 6: they are importing their red state values into these other places.
Speaker 6: So I want to make that clear. The status quo
Speaker 6: that we have now is we have a patchwork where
Speaker 6: red states ban it and blue states allow for it.
Speaker 6: And you know there's some crossover because women who want
Speaker 6: this will go to blue states or will seek out
Speaker 6: help from blue state physicians. And that's what they're trying
Speaker 6: to end. And that's basically what the Supreme Court preserved.
Speaker 6: This was not a decision on the merits. They never
Speaker 6: got into whether the FDA it was on this jurisdictional
Speaker 6: question of standing. Were these anti choice doctors, the Alliance
Speaker 6: for Hipocratic Medicine, were they the right plaintiffs to bringing
Speaker 6: this case because they had never prescribed mifhi pristone, nor
Speaker 6: had they ever had a patient who had been harmed
Speaker 6: by miphi pristone. Because we are they hypocritic, Well they're hypocritical,
Speaker 6: but not hypocritic.
Speaker 1: Are not hypocritic?
Speaker 6: No one like there are very few women who have
Speaker 6: ever been harmed by MiFi pristone because the drug is
Speaker 6: incredibly safe, and so it was a real challenge for
Speaker 6: them to actually find plaintives who could make out an
Speaker 6: actual injury to challenge.
Speaker 5: The regulations of this law.
Speaker 6: And so instead you had these doctors making absolutely specious
Speaker 6: claims that their injury was in losing the aesthetic value
Speaker 6: of seeing a baby born, of seeing their inuteropatient brought
Speaker 6: to life.
Speaker 1: Wait, that was the injury. It wasn't a physical Oh,
Speaker 1: they were hurt.
Speaker 6: It was they were generalized grievance moral objections to abortion.
Speaker 6: And the Court rightly said that that's never been enough
Speaker 6: under Article three of the Constitution to sustain jurisdiction and
Speaker 6: federal court. But the fact that we had to go
Speaker 6: to the Supreme Court to say that is absolutely crazy
Speaker 6: because everybody knows that so well.
Speaker 5: It should have been struck down well.
Speaker 1: Court, for god's sake, they in the same session made
Speaker 1: it so that bump stocks are available. So this thing
Speaker 1: that actually does bring grievous harm to people through turning
Speaker 1: a regular gun into a machine gun. Yeah, that's cool,
Speaker 1: it's imaginary, But.
Speaker 5: This is the thing John.
Speaker 6: So the court issues this decision says, no, this is
Speaker 6: a completely specious standing claim. We're going to kick this
Speaker 6: out of court. We're not even going to decide this
Speaker 6: on the merits. And then you have the mainstream media
Speaker 6: heralding this as a victory for reproductive freedom.
Speaker 1: Are you not the listener at long last? Have your
Speaker 1: no decency? Are you suggesting that the mainstream media has
Speaker 1: not picked up the nuance of this Supreme Court decision?
Speaker 6: I will say when I go on MSNBC, I make
Speaker 6: sure that the nuance is. I do know that everyone
Speaker 6: is doing this, but people are talking about.
Speaker 5: This as a victory.
Speaker 6: It's not a victory, or if it is, it's a
Speaker 6: very muted victory. And it's not going to last. They
Speaker 6: are going to find new plaintiffs that will challenge us.
Speaker 6: And the only winner well, but this is the point.
Speaker 6: The winner here is not the pro choice movement. It's
Speaker 6: the court. Because the Court gets to appear moderate on
Speaker 6: the issue of abortion at a time when millions of
Speaker 6: people are galvanized about abortion as an electoral issue. We
Speaker 6: have an election coming up in a few months. This
Speaker 6: Court does not want to be a part of that
Speaker 6: election and that narrative. And so this is a win
Speaker 6: for the court. They get to be moderate, they get
Speaker 6: to be consentious driven and rule of law oriented. But
Speaker 6: in fact they've merely preserved a shitty status quo that
Speaker 6: they brought into be and kicked.
Speaker 1: It down the road. Jessica, I want to ask you
Speaker 1: because we bring up you know, we sort of talk
Speaker 1: about these things in the well, in red states it's this,
Speaker 1: and in blue states it's this. But it's obviously never
Speaker 1: as simple, and there are certainly blue cities in red
Speaker 1: states and read voters in blue states and never the
Speaker 1: Twain shall meet. But the fact is, you know, the
Speaker 1: hurdles that they put up for people is the thing
Speaker 1: that is really I think made it so difficult for
Speaker 1: women to make these choices. You know, Melissa talked earlier
Speaker 1: about these these travel bands and the like. But so
Speaker 1: if you're in a city, a blue city that broadly
Speaker 1: supports abortion, but you're in a red state, let's go
Speaker 1: with Houston and Texas. Yeah, what what is your what
Speaker 1: is your option? What is your recourse?
Speaker 4: I mean it's really either travel right, which you have
Speaker 4: to have enough money to do. You have to have
Speaker 4: support to get out of the state, or you can
Speaker 4: get abortion medication shipped to you in the state, but
Speaker 4: you have to risk. Okay, if someone finds out about this,
Speaker 4: if an ex boyfriend, someone who doesn't like me finds
Speaker 4: out that I had abortion medication ship to me, they
Speaker 4: can make my life hell. They can bring a lawsuit
Speaker 4: because Texas has the ability to bring civil suits against
Speaker 4: anyone who aids and avets in an abortion. And so
Speaker 4: there's a real chilling up foot.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, don't don't bury the lead there, what
Speaker 1: say say that again?
Speaker 4: So Texas has something that has sort of been formally
Speaker 4: called the bounty hunter Mandy.
Speaker 1: Where you can get bounty ounder man. Yeah, for pregnant women.
Speaker 4: Well, this is how they get around it because they
Speaker 4: never want to seem as if they're attack the actual
Speaker 4: pregnant person. They say, anyone other than the pregnant person.
Speaker 4: So someone who drove them out of state, someone who
Speaker 4: helped them get abortion medication. In one case, a woman's
Speaker 4: abusive ex husband brought a lawsuit against three of her friends, yeah,
Speaker 4: who helped her to allegedly get abortion medication into the
Speaker 4: state and enter her pregnancy. And so now you're set
Speaker 4: up with this system where if you have an abusive
Speaker 4: ex partner who wants to make you miserable, they can
Speaker 4: go ahead and they can sue your friends for helping
Speaker 4: you to get care. And what that means is that
Speaker 4: all of these people who may have had, you know,
Speaker 4: the ability to travel, the ability to get abortion medication
Speaker 4: ship to them, are terrified. They're terrified that they're going
Speaker 4: to ruin their partner's life, ruin their friend's life.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure the doctors then must be terrified that
Speaker 1: they're going to get prosecuted as well. All right, quick break,
Speaker 1: we're about all right, let me back this up to
Speaker 1: just for a moment, because these are the things that
Speaker 1: sort of shocked the conscience. But I want to talk
Speaker 1: about a little bit before this happened. Isn't the pressure
Speaker 1: that they brought to bear on abortion providers. Isn't the
Speaker 1: pressure they brought to bear of Oh, if you're going
Speaker 1: to do that kind of care, your facility has to
Speaker 1: be like a hospital, and you've got and then through
Speaker 1: sort of intimidation of the doctors, they made it so
Speaker 1: that there's very few clinics, so that even within the state,
Speaker 1: people had overwhelming travel hurdles, especially if they didn't have
Speaker 1: the kind of resources that you know, people might have
Speaker 1: to have to get that something done. Even before these
Speaker 1: types of more draconian measures have been put into place,
Speaker 1: haven't they put into place effective bands prior to this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I have a guest column at my newsletter today
Speaker 4: from a woman who lost vision in one of her
Speaker 4: eyes because her abortion care was delayed in Maryland before
Speaker 4: Roe is overturned. So they had these laws in place
Speaker 4: for a really long time. And I think you're talking
Speaker 4: about trap laws, which is targeted regulation of abortion providers.
Speaker 4: And so, yeah, they did everything that they could, even
Speaker 4: in pro choice states. So for example, if you're an
Speaker 4: abortion provider in a pro choice state, they say, well,
Speaker 4: you need to have admitting privileges at a local hospital.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: The problem is a local hospital is not going to
Speaker 4: give an abortion provider admitting privileges because they never bring
Speaker 4: patients there because abortion is so safe that they're not
Speaker 4: bringing any patients into the hospital. And so they've set
Speaker 4: up this system.
Speaker 1: Where it's essentially impossible.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly, and so they just made it increasingly difficult
Speaker 4: to keep clinics open, even if it was ostensibly legal.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you a question, Mosa, is there recourse
Speaker 1: in states where it's legal to go after other states,
Speaker 1: let's say, because they're interfering with interstate commerce. If a
Speaker 1: state is preventing you from traveling into a blue state
Speaker 1: for a procedure. Couldn't that be construed as interference at
Speaker 1: some level?
Speaker 6: No, I think that's right, And I think there are
Speaker 6: a number of blue states and blue state ages that
Speaker 6: are contemplating the prospect of dormant commerce Clause challenges to
Speaker 6: the fact that essentially these red states are imposing their
Speaker 6: own public policy preferences on the citizens of blue states
Speaker 6: who don't share them. And there is actually a very
Speaker 6: interesting case in the Serene Court a couple of terms ago,
Speaker 6: not about abortion, but ironically about pork production.
Speaker 5: The state of California had particular rules pork production.
Speaker 6: The state of California, not surprisingly, had particular rules about
Speaker 6: how the pigs that were slaughtered and then used for
Speaker 6: pork products were kept, and you know, and the pork
Speaker 6: industry challenged these regulations on the view that because California
Speaker 6: was such a large state with you know, such a
Speaker 6: demand for these products, that their public policy preferences for
Speaker 6: humanly raised and pastured pork products then basically were exported
Speaker 6: out to other states that didn't share them. And so
Speaker 6: I remember the oral argument in this case really keenly,
Speaker 6: because everyone seemed really concerned about the dormant commerce clause
Speaker 6: and about interstate commerce and the prospect of very large
Speaker 6: states exerting their will on smaller states. And it didn't
Speaker 6: seem to be about pork products at all. And I
Speaker 6: think it actually was a shadow debate for what would
Speaker 6: happen in the post real world.
Speaker 1: And so what was the decision in that case?
Speaker 5: You know what, let me let me check on that.
Speaker 5: I want to make sure that that's right.
Speaker 1: Are you wait? You can't google during a podcast that.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I don't want to make sure. I just I want
Speaker 5: to make sure that I'm right.
Speaker 6: Okay, the court affirmed the dismissal of the complaint, So
Speaker 6: it's like it's sided with California.
Speaker 5: But if it were presented.
Speaker 6: In any other contrast, well, yeah, I mean, if it's
Speaker 6: same idea, say it sort of a jurisdictional question, But
Speaker 6: I imagine the debate and the disposition of the case
Speaker 6: might have been really different if it had been something
Speaker 6: like abortion or guns and not necessarily part that's right.
Speaker 1: I want to get into that because that's that's interesting
Speaker 1: to me, because I do think there will be unforeseen
Speaker 1: consequences and cases that come out of this when you
Speaker 1: follow the logic. So I'm going to present some other
Speaker 1: logical maneuvers on this. I'm sure most of them are
Speaker 1: fillacial and make no sense, but I'd be happy to
Speaker 1: have you address them anyway. So now you have in Texas,
Speaker 1: if somebody abts someone in the driving to Illinois or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, and then they always want to say
Speaker 1: things like, well, but we do make an exception for
Speaker 1: the health of the woman if she is in danger. Correct?
Speaker 1: Is that for the most part? I know there are
Speaker 1: some that don't. But isn't there an emergency care for
Speaker 1: the health of the woman?
Speaker 5: These exist?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Supposed, good luck, good luck qual finding. Here's the thing.
Speaker 6: I think you see it all the time, and you
Speaker 6: see it in the context of the bounty hunter laws.
Speaker 6: These laws aren't necessarily meant to survive legal challenges.
Speaker 5: Their greatest efficacy can be in the.
Speaker 6: Short term, where they chill what would be otherwise lawful conducts.
Speaker 6: So you're right, there is an exception. So take Texas's
Speaker 6: law for example. Texas provides that you know, if you
Speaker 6: are getting an abortion, it has to be for these
Speaker 6: sort of exigent circumstances. And those exigent circumstances include when
Speaker 6: a patient has a quote life threatening condition, and is
Speaker 6: at risk of death or substantial impairment of a major
Speaker 6: bodily function. But it doesn't define what the substantial impairment
Speaker 6: of a major bodily infunction.
Speaker 1: It says in itself it's not a benign process, Isn't that?
Speaker 1: Couldn't that be considered a substantial impairment?
Speaker 6: All of that, And so you know, without actual definitions,
Speaker 6: it's left to the physicians to make these judgments knowing
Speaker 6: that an enterprising attorney general like say Ken Paxton might
Speaker 6: come down really hard on them if he doesn't agree
Speaker 6: with their medical judgment. So in these circumstances, I think
Speaker 6: doctors feel like their hands are tied. They know what
Speaker 6: they would do in their medical judgment, they just don't
Speaker 6: know where medical judgment begins and the law ends. And
Speaker 6: if they take the chance, if they take the risk,
Speaker 6: there can be real consequences. Consequences, yeah, I mean legal
Speaker 6: consequences and collateral consequences. Like you know, if you are
Speaker 6: a party to some kind of legal proceeding, even if
Speaker 6: you ultimately prevail, you have to document that for purposes
Speaker 6: of licensure, and you could have your licensing, you might
Speaker 6: not be able to get insurance. I mean it's a
Speaker 6: real conundrum for them.
Speaker 1: Jessica has that impacted people in a human way, in
Speaker 1: a real way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, this is what I was going to say.
Speaker 4: There's right, there's what the law says, and then there's
Speaker 4: what actually happens in real life, and from yes to
Speaker 4: human beings, which would be nice to think about every once.
Speaker 1: In a while.
Speaker 5: Human beings, not vessels. Not vessels hard.
Speaker 4: So the example that you gave, right, let's say someone
Speaker 4: wanted to travel the person depending on the county they
Speaker 4: are in Texas. Several counties in Texas have passed what
Speaker 4: they're calling anti trafficking laws, abortion trafficking laws that again
Speaker 4: allow a civil suit to be brought against someone who
Speaker 4: uses the roads of that particular county to bring someone
Speaker 4: out of state for an abortion. And so it's this
Speaker 4: slow chipping away at our ability to travel, and that's
Speaker 4: like a really terrifying thing.
Speaker 1: To even given the mother's health being in question.
Speaker 4: Well, this is part of the issue, as Melissa said,
Speaker 4: there's no real standard on what that means.
Speaker 1: A case of a woman, there was a woman who
Speaker 1: her it was an eighteen week miscarriage, I think, but
Speaker 1: the fetus was her water had broken and wasn't going
Speaker 1: to survive, but she herself was not in that moment.
Speaker 5: Meant they have to wait until the exact she had.
Speaker 4: To go home.
Speaker 1: I think she had to go home and get stepsis. Okay,
Speaker 1: so here we go. So now we're going to get
Speaker 1: to Now we're going to flip the thing. And this
Speaker 1: is all informed by I think sort of my experience
Speaker 1: with this, and this has to do with my family,
Speaker 1: my way. So we won't even get into IVF, which
Speaker 1: is what we had to do to have children. So
Speaker 1: it's incredible to me to live in this world now
Speaker 1: where the children that we desperately wanted would not be
Speaker 1: able to be had because if these people get their way,
Speaker 1: there'd be no IVF. My wife after our second child,
Speaker 1: this is after she was born hemorrhaged. This was probably
Speaker 1: three days post birth. Right we were home. She was
Speaker 1: in danger. She needed blood transfusions. We were incredibly fortunate
Speaker 1: to have good health care. We were able to get
Speaker 1: her in. She was operated on under an emergency basis
Speaker 1: on that night. Right. But my point is this pregnancy
Speaker 1: can always be a risk to a woman's health. This
Speaker 1: idea that it has to be based on a fetal
Speaker 1: abnormality or something going wrong. You don't know and aren't
Speaker 1: these laws? So who then is libel? Let's say in
Speaker 1: the case of our thing, let's say she didn't want
Speaker 1: to carry that baby to term, she was forced to
Speaker 1: by the state and post birth hemorrhaged and died. Well,
Speaker 1: who's responsible for that? If you can arrest people for
Speaker 1: a betting, somebody driving into Illinois, who is responsible for
Speaker 1: the death of women who are going to have emergency
Speaker 1: complications arise? And how come that's not part of the conversation?
Speaker 1: And what do you think we can do about that, Jessica,
Speaker 1: I'll ask you first then and then be sure.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is part of what the case in
Speaker 4: Texas where twenty women sued Texas for the extreme health
Speaker 4: issues that they had because of the abortion band. And
Speaker 4: essentially what happened is they blame the doctors, right, they said,
Speaker 4: the law is not the issue. Any you know, reasonable
Speaker 4: doctor would have given care at that point. And this
Speaker 4: is something that they've sort of set themselves up to
Speaker 4: do for a long time, to blame the doctors, to say,
Speaker 4: you just don't understand the law. The law is fine
Speaker 4: as it is, you should have given the care and
Speaker 4: so once again the liability goes to the doctors given
Speaker 4: the you know, the right judge and the right for it.
Speaker 1: If a woman dies in childbirth for a baby that
Speaker 1: she did not want to have, it is only the
Speaker 1: doctor that is liable, not the state for forcing her
Speaker 1: into that pregnancy. Melissa. Is that correct?
Speaker 6: That's basically what they're saying. I'm Texas. The Texas Supreme
Speaker 6: Court Scotex if you will, issued a decision at the
Speaker 6: end of May on the Tzorosky case and basically said, yeah,
Speaker 6: these seem good to us, and doctors know what they're
Speaker 6: to do, and they should do it, and they should
Speaker 6: provide this care like there's not a problem here. And
Speaker 6: this is a court that's entirely Republican, and this was
Speaker 6: an unanimous decision from the court and again completely stripped
Speaker 6: of any humanity for either the pregnant patient or the
Speaker 6: doctor who genuinely is worried about whether or not they're
Speaker 6: going to lose their livelihood if they make a decision,
Speaker 6: and their patients who are not just at risk of death,
Speaker 6: but I mean there's a lot between a valid and
Speaker 6: viable pregnancy and death.
Speaker 5: I mean, you can.
Speaker 6: Lose your fertility if you go septic like, lots of
Speaker 6: things can happen.
Speaker 1: It's not just even beyond that. It can create hypertension,
Speaker 1: it can everything else. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Process, But John, this goes to your point about democracy.
Speaker 6: We have right now highly gerrymandered state legislatures who are
Speaker 6: making these laws. These legislatures are not comprised of physicians.
Speaker 6: They're not even comprised of women of reproductive age. It's
Speaker 6: a lot of men, many men, who are not in
Speaker 6: the same age bandwidth of as most women who are
Speaker 6: in their prime reproductive years. And the idea that you
Speaker 6: are being your views are being reflected, your interests are
Speaker 6: being accounted for in the legislative process, that's just a fallacy.
Speaker 6: I mean, these are geriatric legislators made up of men
Speaker 6: who are not doctors, making laws that will legislate for
Speaker 6: doctors and their patients. And they're not The legislatures aren't
Speaker 6: affected by this, but their patients are. And again, I
Speaker 6: just want to emphasize the way in which the anti
Speaker 6: choice movement has ginned up all of this. Like James
Speaker 6: bop who is the spokesperson the head of the National
Speaker 6: Right to Life Committee, argues that the physicians are the problem.
Speaker 6: The laws are clear, and if they're not clear enough
Speaker 6: for the physicians, the onus is on the physicians to
Speaker 6: suggest fixes. That's literally what he says, they should suggest
Speaker 6: the fixes. Doctors aren't legislators. Whose job is it.
Speaker 5: It's the legislature's job.
Speaker 1: Melissa and Jessica, I want you to address this. There
Speaker 1: is no fix for a process where some women die.
Speaker 1: How do you fix pregnancy to make it so that
Speaker 1: there is no chance that a woman dies if you
Speaker 1: force someone to carry a p And I understand there's
Speaker 1: at a certain point in the development of the fetus
Speaker 1: in the embryo or the embry or the fetus, and
Speaker 1: that the rights of both tend to converge. Right, I
Speaker 1: get that, But starting on that journey, you cannot guarantee
Speaker 1: a woman that you'll be okay.
Speaker 4: You just can't, especially in the US right where maternal
Speaker 4: mortality is right, so awful, right, And I have to say,
Speaker 4: just getting back to the scenario we were talking about before,
Speaker 4: even if someone is able to get that health indicated
Speaker 4: life saving abortion in a lot of these states because
Speaker 4: the way they've written the law in such a way
Speaker 4: that instead of giving standard abortion procedures, they're giving women
Speaker 4: see sections or forcing them into vaginal labor even before viability,
Speaker 4: even when they know that there's no chance for the
Speaker 4: fetus's survival. And this is one of the ways that
Speaker 4: doctors are trying to protect themselves from liability. But it's
Speaker 4: also written in the laws. If a life saving care
Speaker 4: is needed and they need to end the pregnancy, you
Speaker 4: need to give a maternal fetal separation, which means sea
Speaker 4: section or forced vaginal labor. And it's you know, just
Speaker 4: getting back to the actual real life suffering that is happening.
Speaker 4: That's for some women, that's the best case scenario that
Speaker 4: the life saving care that they get is unnecessaryly you know,
Speaker 4: major abdominal surgery.
Speaker 6: But John, this goes back to the point I think
Speaker 6: you made earlier. We're fighting for the shards of reproductive freedom,
Speaker 6: the opportunity to have physicians make exegent decisions on behalf
Speaker 6: of their pregnant patients. We're not fighting upstream for what
Speaker 6: would reproductive freedom look like in an ideal world, because
Speaker 6: for now that is gone. I mean, the court preserved
Speaker 6: the status quo on mefipristone. There all were already three
Speaker 6: states who are teed up and ready to bring that
Speaker 6: case on the ground that they have been injured by
Speaker 6: the fact that right, yeah, they have different they have
Speaker 6: a different claim of standing. Their claim is going to
Speaker 6: be that as anti abortion states, the availability of mefipristone
Speaker 6: and medication, abortion flouts their ability to regulate abortion.
Speaker 1: That's flipped, Melissa. Can't that be flipped? So let's say
Speaker 1: there is a family that lost a daughter a wife
Speaker 1: because they were forced to endure pregnancy and they died
Speaker 1: during that pregnancy, and can't that Can't that then be flipped?
Speaker 1: But let me let me also and this can be flipped.
Speaker 6: I mean, but here's the thing, Like, we're literally contemplating
Speaker 6: scenarios where our victories are built on I know, the
Speaker 6: backs of dead women.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, listen, well listen, it's this is an
Speaker 1: awful scenario. I am literally just trying to figure out. Yeah, I.
Speaker 6: Think you bat like that's a policy. I mean, that's
Speaker 6: how roe came into being. Like stories like Jerry sent Toro,
Speaker 6: who was a mother of two who was literally butchered
Speaker 6: in a hotel room trying to end a pregnancy she
Speaker 6: did not want me.
Speaker 1: Let me ask you, is there any other law that
Speaker 1: compels a person ostensibly to save someone else's life. So
Speaker 1: the idea being, well, the abortion is to save a
Speaker 1: baby's like once it reaches a certain gestational age, and
Speaker 1: do the thing. But let's say, for instance, my kidney
Speaker 1: would if I were to give it to somebody, it
Speaker 1: would save their life. Could I ever be compelled to
Speaker 1: do that? You're never placed in a situation human beings
Speaker 1: other than like the military draft, where the government tells
Speaker 1: you to do something where you might lose your life
Speaker 1: or have otherwise harm. But we're doing this to win,
Speaker 1: are we not. We're compelling them.
Speaker 6: So I don't know, outside of Prince Harry, who says
Speaker 6: in his autobiography Spare that he was born to allow
Speaker 6: for extra organs for Prince William, if they like leaving
Speaker 6: that to the side, Like you know, yours, your example
Speaker 6: is an extreme one, but I think the anti choice
Speaker 6: movement would put up a different example, and that example
Speaker 6: would be vaccinations. Vaccinations, like the idea that mandatory vaccinations
Speaker 6: to secure collective public health is an intrusion on your
Speaker 6: bodily autonomy that that you may not want.
Speaker 5: But I think again, there can be harm. There can
Speaker 5: be harm. I think that's right. There can be harm.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think the differences between a vaccination, even one
Speaker 6: that is, you know, very quickly rolled out and pregnant,
Speaker 6: and the real harms of pregnancy. I think you can
Speaker 6: make a pretty clear distinction between those. But I think
Speaker 6: that's the example that they use, and in fact, Amy
Speaker 6: Cony Barrett in the Dobbs oral argument.
Speaker 5: That was the example that she used.
Speaker 6: She's like, you know, speaking of bodily autonomy, what about vaccinations?
Speaker 6: Go here we go again, So you know, this question
Speaker 6: of bodily autonomy can go both ways. Like they have
Speaker 6: made a lot about this in the context of masking
Speaker 6: and vaccinations, right, and.
Speaker 1: Well, abortions, it's not but vaccinations.
Speaker 5: Well, I mean they do make.
Speaker 6: The claim, yeah, but I mean they make that claim
Speaker 6: in those two contexts and seem completely oblivious that you
Speaker 6: could make the very same arguments in the context of abortion.
Speaker 1: All right, well, we'll be right back. All right, let's
Speaker 1: get back into it, Jessica. Is that you know, for
Speaker 1: the women that you're trying to uphold and represent, you know,
Speaker 1: what is in your mind kind of the mental health
Speaker 1: of a community that feels trapped by this idea and
Speaker 1: sort of placed into a you know, a secondary position
Speaker 1: in society, right.
Speaker 4: I mean, I do think you know, in anti choice
Speaker 4: states it's just constant fear. I think that's safe to
Speaker 4: say there's just constant fear, right and in pro choice states.
Speaker 4: And I have this conversation a lot with my daughter.
Speaker 4: Outside of the immediate physical impact that these bands have
Speaker 4: on people, it does something to you as a person
Speaker 4: to know that your country doesn't see you as fully human, right,
Speaker 4: Like there is an emotional toll to know that you
Speaker 4: don't matter. There was a woman in Oklahoma who you know,
Speaker 4: another one of these post row horror stories, where she
Speaker 4: was miscarrying, she couldn't get care, she had to travel
Speaker 4: out of states, spend thousands of dollars, and she said,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to get pregnant again because now I
Speaker 4: know my life doesn't matter. Now I know I don't count.
Speaker 4: So why would I ever put myself in that situation?
Speaker 4: Because as soon as you're pregnant in this country, you
Speaker 4: do not count, You do not matter. And that's a
Speaker 4: really difficult bitter pill to swallow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's tough, Melissa. Is there are you finding on
Speaker 1: the horizon? Are there the types of legal challenges to this?
Speaker 1: Where do you see this with a little bit of
Speaker 1: light at the end of the tunnel, or do you
Speaker 1: think it gets darker before things begin to shape out.
Speaker 5: I want to emphasize the limits of law here.
Speaker 6: Law is not necessarily a place for imaginative solutions to
Speaker 6: real problems. If you're in the courts, you're necessarily in
Speaker 6: a defensive poster. So I'm not thinking about legal solutions
Speaker 6: for this. I mean, I think there can be cases,
Speaker 6: but as I said, those are the cases that are
Speaker 6: going to be built on a foundation of utter tragedy.
Speaker 6: Like literally we'll be litigating from the posture of dead women.
Speaker 6: I think the bigger opportunity is in the political or
Speaker 6: electoral space. Right, we live in a distorted democracy. The
Speaker 6: Court has made it much harder for individuals to register
Speaker 6: their preferences through representative government because of its rulings on jerrymandering.
Speaker 6: It's made it harder to register your preferences at the
Speaker 6: ballot box because of laws that allow for voter suppression.
Speaker 5: And look, the.
Speaker 1: Constitution is already jerrymandered to favor rural white one hundred
Speaker 1: per one hundred percent.
Speaker 6: So I mean, so I just want to say that,
Speaker 6: like I understand, the challenge is like we truly live
Speaker 6: in a distorted democracy. We have to recognize the fact
Speaker 6: of that distortion, but understand that that distortion can be
Speaker 6: counteracted by overwhelming participation collective action. Right so, you know,
Speaker 6: we have an election coming up the court. On the
Speaker 6: ballot in that election, you know justice is Thomas and
Speaker 6: Alito in addition to having emotional support. Billionaires are Subtugeneians,
Speaker 6: and if Donald Trump is elected, they will step down.
Speaker 6: They will retire the day after the inauguration, and they
Speaker 6: will be replaced by teenagers. And this six to three
Speaker 6: conservative supermajority not only maybe expanded to seven to two
Speaker 6: or eight to one, it will endure even longer because
Speaker 6: the judges will be younger. So we are fighting defensively
Speaker 6: right now in every forum, but the electoral space is
Speaker 6: where we have the opportunity really help counteract this.
Speaker 5: If you can.
Speaker 6: Prevent Donald Trump from appointing new justices to fill Thomas
Speaker 6: an Alito's seat, from filling any other seat, that's a
Speaker 6: win right now, and we have to take that win.
Speaker 6: We have to look at state courts, where you know,
Speaker 6: all of these challenges in our abortion are shifting, not
Speaker 6: they're shifting from federal courts to state courts.
Speaker 5: Those state courts.
Speaker 6: Have to be in a position to make rulings that
Speaker 6: are consistent with the will of the people. We have
Speaker 6: to have legislatures that are ready to enact constitutional amendments
Speaker 6: to their state to their state constitutions that would protect
Speaker 6: reproductive freedom. We can't just focus on the president. We
Speaker 6: have to be down ballot. We have to focus on
Speaker 6: keeping the Senate. The Trump administration was so successful at
Speaker 6: adding movement conservatives to the federal court. Completely transformed the
Speaker 6: federal court, and the Biden administration has done a great
Speaker 6: job counteracting some of that.
Speaker 5: But there needs to be eight.
Speaker 6: More years of work on this, and you've got to
Speaker 6: have the Senate to do that. So this is not
Speaker 6: the moment to be divided in our big tent. It's
Speaker 6: the moment to come together as a big tent to
Speaker 6: overwhelm the distortion that's tried to divide us and limit
Speaker 6: our authority.
Speaker 1: Melissa, that's a phenomenal. As my daughter would say, I
Speaker 1: believe you may have ate eaten and left no crumps.
Speaker 1: That was a that's it. I think that's what she
Speaker 1: said to me.
Speaker 5: That's what the young people say.
Speaker 1: The young people say you ate and left no problems.
Speaker 1: It's that that is an unbelievably trenchant and fabulous point
Speaker 1: and one that has to be at the forefront because,
Speaker 1: to be frank, the other group is tenacious and strategic,
Speaker 1: and they understand how to overwhelm them, you know, and
Speaker 1: take out the bottom of that. Jessica, is there anything
Speaker 1: else that you wanted to add before I let you
Speaker 1: guys go?
Speaker 4: Yeah, just building on something Melissa said. It does give
Speaker 4: me a lot of hope when I think about just
Speaker 4: how popular abortion rights are and if we get to
Speaker 4: that place where we're focusing on the electoral bit. This
Speaker 4: is an issue that people like to talk about as
Speaker 4: if it's something the country is evenly split on or
Speaker 4: a revocably polarized over.
Speaker 1: Right, It's not fifty fifty, We're not, No, there was.
Speaker 4: There's been several polls that have come out this year
Speaker 4: that showed eighty percent over eighty percent of Americans don't
Speaker 4: want any government involvement at all in pregnancy. They do
Speaker 4: not want abortion to be regulated by the law at all.
Speaker 4: This is something that is really really important to voters,
Speaker 4: and it goes across parties. So that is something like
Speaker 4: as horrible as all of this is, and it is
Speaker 4: horrible to talk about this every day and to write
Speaker 4: about this and to do this work. It gives me
Speaker 4: so much hope knowing that Americans really do understand what's
Speaker 4: at stake and how important this issue is.
Speaker 1: Well, I thank you guys both so much. Melissa Marie
Speaker 1: n Yu, law professor, co host of Strict Scrutiny podcast,
Speaker 1: and my go to Melissa, you know, you might go
Speaker 1: to whatever. Whenever I get into trouble, I would say,
Speaker 1: what would Melissa Murray? How would she put this that
Speaker 1: I like?
Speaker 6: I you said, I don't call Melissa Murray to be
Speaker 6: my lawyer, but I do refer.
Speaker 1: As like, go to law whatever it is. And Jessica Vilandi,
Speaker 1: founder of Abortion every Day dot com and author of
Speaker 1: the forthcoming book Abortion, Our Bodies, Their Lives, and the
Speaker 1: Truths We used to win. Guys, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being here.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Wow. Look, I don't want to say Melissa Murray blows
Speaker 1: me away every time I hear from her, but holy God,
Speaker 1: the information being held in a normal sized head that's
Speaker 1: just just got a normal sized head, and yet all
Speaker 1: that information, and Jessica, you know you can tell you know,
Speaker 1: Melissa's attacking it from a legal sense. Jessica's really feeling
Speaker 1: I think the human burden of this. Yeah, and boy
Speaker 1: she articulated that so well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the personal stories, I mean they they break my
Speaker 3: heart every time, Like I just like I can't wrap
Speaker 3: my head around the conversations and how this is still happening.
Speaker 1: But yeah, well she and the way she said it.
Speaker 1: You know, look, even with these legal victories, remember it's
Speaker 1: on the backs of dead women, and you just think,
Speaker 1: oh god, that's right. You know, sometimes we forget in
Speaker 1: these theoretical and now there's that Lauren, what was that
Speaker 1: case in Idaho? That's oh yeah, now coming.
Speaker 2: Up the Supreme Court term is meant to decide on
Speaker 2: Idaho the United States, where Idaho is pushing back against
Speaker 2: a federal law that allows emergency abortion in the case
Speaker 2: of the life of the mother.
Speaker 1: So that's a fun way literally saying even if the
Speaker 1: life of the mother is in jeopardy, nope, sorry, yeah,
Speaker 1: holy shit. So well, wow, just a lot to certainly
Speaker 1: a lot to chew on there. But and the call
Speaker 1: to action from Melissa at the end I thought was
Speaker 1: just boy, what a great reminder of what's really at
Speaker 1: stake and fabulous. That is the Weekly Show for this week.
Speaker 1: As always, you can't do it without lead producer Lauren Walker,
Speaker 1: Producer Brittany me Medovic, the Man behind the Glass, Rob
Speaker 1: the Tolo, video editor and engineer, Audio editor and engineer
Speaker 1: Nicole Boyce, our fabulous researcher Catherine Dowan, and as always,
Speaker 1: executive producers Katie Gray and Chris mcshape. Come on, fantastic,
Speaker 1: best in the biz, Best in the biz. For God's sakes,
Speaker 1: Where can they find us?
Speaker 3: We are Weekly Show Pod on Twitter, Weekly Show Podcast
Speaker 3: on Instagram, threads TikTok, and The Weekly Show with John
Speaker 3: Stewart on YouTube.
Speaker 1: We're on Instagram, Yeah we are. What would we do
Speaker 1: on Instagram?
Speaker 3: Just picture?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I don't I Unfortunately for me, it's it's a
Speaker 1: desert out there. If you've got to get pictures of
Speaker 1: this fantastic guys, Thanks so much and uh we'll see
Speaker 1: y'all next week. Thanks for listening to this episode of
Speaker 1: The Weekly Show. If you liked it, follow the show
Speaker 1: on your favorite podcast app and tune in every Thursday
Speaker 1: for new episode and send us your ideas. Why not
Speaker 1: save us the work? The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart
Speaker 1: is a Comedy Central podcast is produced by Paramount Audio
Speaker 1: and Busboy Productions.
Speaker 5: Paramount Podcasts