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Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. I'm June Grosso. Every

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Speaker 1: day we bring you insight and analysis into the most

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Speaker 1: important legal news of the day. You can find more

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Speaker 1: episodes of the Bloomberg Law Podcast on Apple podcast, SoundCloud

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Speaker 1: and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcasts. Hundreds of Her

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Speaker 1: Choice demonstrators marched to Alabama State capital on Sunday to

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Speaker 1: protest the Governor's sonny, the nation's strictest abortion law. In

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Speaker 1: a series of tweets, President Trump did not state whether

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Speaker 1: you was four or against the Alabama law, but said

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Speaker 1: he holds the same anti abortion position as President Ronald Reagan.

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Speaker 1: Joining me is Harold Crant, dean of the Chicago Kent

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Speaker 1: College of Law and author of the book Presidential Powers. Harold.

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Speaker 1: These abortion laws range from Alabama's near total band to

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Speaker 1: Georgia's heartbeat law to Utah's ban on abortions after pregnancies

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Speaker 1: reach eighteen weeks. Will those distinctions make a difference when

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Speaker 1: these laws are challenged in federal court? The distinctions might?

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Speaker 1: The Supreme Court has articulated an undue burden test to

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Speaker 1: determine whether these various legislative restrictions so disadvantage a women's

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Speaker 1: right to choose that it violates the due process clause

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Speaker 1: of the Constitution. So, depending upon articulation of the undue burden,

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Speaker 1: some of these rules or restrictions may be considered constitutionals,

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Speaker 1: such as informed consent or waiting periods, and others will

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Speaker 1: likely be deemed unconstitutional unless Roll versus Wade is overturned.

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Speaker 1: Anti abortion activists have said openly that these laws are

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Speaker 1: designed to force the Supreme Court to reconsider Roe v. Wade. Today,

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Speaker 1: the Court deferred action on to less sweeping abortion disputes

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Speaker 1: from Indiana. How long can the Court avoid the issue?

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Speaker 1: The Supreme Court path has been someone curious because it

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Speaker 1: seems that a majority of the Court is in no

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Speaker 1: rush to begin to consider whether and how much to

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Speaker 1: chip away at the roversus. Wade precedent. On the other hand,

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Speaker 1: maybe in a conference in the coming weeks, the Court

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Speaker 1: may decide to take the case, which would only be

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Speaker 1: heard next year anyway. So how quickly the Court will

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Speaker 1: act in terms of taking up these cases is unclear,

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Speaker 1: but it will be pressured because once a Georgia law

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Speaker 1: goes into effect, or in Alabama or Missouri law goes

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Speaker 1: into effect, there will be challenges immediately to stop the

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Speaker 1: law because they seem so blatantly out of sync with

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Speaker 1: ro versus Wade. Last week, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Bryer,

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Speaker 1: in a dissent in a case where the Court overturned

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Speaker 1: a forty year old precedent, hinted about abortion rights and

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Speaker 1: the possibility that there could be another overturning. Is he

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Speaker 1: is he hinting at what's been happening in those conferences

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Speaker 1: where the Court has been rejecting these abortion cases that

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Speaker 1: have come before it. Well, the abortion of cases that

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Speaker 1: have come before it would not set up a clear

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Speaker 1: case or challenge to roll versus way. That really has

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Speaker 1: to do with a creation of an undue burden. But

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Speaker 1: I will say that his descent was quite striking, as

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Speaker 1: you pointed out, because that particular case on state sovereignty

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Speaker 1: was not a great context for where one would think

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Speaker 1: that starry decisis would hold or the rule of president

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Speaker 1: would hold. And so people do think that because it

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Speaker 1: seems a lot of place that he was just making

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Speaker 1: an appeal to the public to pressure, perhaps Chief Justice

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Speaker 1: Roberts that go slow and keep roversus way as vital

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Speaker 1: as possible, because one of those Indiana cases has been

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Speaker 1: held over for fourteen conferences, So why are they deferring

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Speaker 1: it instead of just either acting on it or turning

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Speaker 1: it down. Sometimes there's horse trading that the justices will say,

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Speaker 1: I'll vote for years if you look for mine in

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Speaker 1: terms of setting the agenda for the next year, and

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Speaker 1: that may be going on. I really don't know. It

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Speaker 1: could be that they're undecided and they just wanted to

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Speaker 1: hunt the toughest decisions until the end of the term.

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Speaker 1: It's obviously speculation, and what goes on post conferences are

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Speaker 1: kept close to the vest, so we can only speculate.

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Speaker 1: But certainly very few cases are punted from one to

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Speaker 1: two to fourteen conferences in a row. So President Trump

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Speaker 1: appears to be walking some kind of fine political line.

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Speaker 1: He says he is anti abortion except in cases of rape, incest,

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Speaker 1: or the mother's health. How would that position play kate

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Speaker 1: women's rights activists? Would it play kate women's rights activists? Well,

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Speaker 1: what's interesting is that it probably would not play kate

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Speaker 1: most women's rights and obviously most women are now voting Democratic.

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Speaker 1: But it would lead to striking down both the Alabama

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Speaker 1: and the Missouri law because both in Alabama and Missouri,

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Speaker 1: the legislatures have not allowed for an ext option for

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Speaker 1: incest or for rape, And of course the President has

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Speaker 1: echoed President Reagan in suggesting that those two exceptions, along

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Speaker 1: with health of the mother, are the three critical exceptions

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Speaker 1: in order to make a law constitutional. But Alabama and

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Speaker 1: Missouri went even further, and it seems that some other

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Speaker 1: Republicans have been saying that those laws went further than necessary.

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Speaker 1: Should Republicans be worried that the laws that take it

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Speaker 1: that far might ignite more action? Yeah, I mean, I

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Speaker 1: think that's the great question of politics, is if the

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Speaker 1: Republicans are too successful, are they going to bring this

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Speaker 1: question back to the forefront and there'll be a backlash

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Speaker 1: at the polls coming up in the next eighteen months.

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Speaker 1: I can't judge that, but certainly, if I were a strategist,

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Speaker 1: that's something that I would want to focus on, because

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Speaker 1: I think that the specter of not being allowed to

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Speaker 1: have an abortion in the case of rape and incests

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Speaker 1: is so far against the mainstream of American thought that

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Speaker 1: it may politically activate that you left in a way

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Speaker 1: that would be down to the detriment of the Republicans.

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Speaker 1: Harold you see one state after another past these very

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Speaker 1: strict abortion laws. Is this some kind of coordinated campaign,

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Speaker 1: because anti abortion activists have been after this since Roe v.

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Speaker 1: Wade was passed. Basically, yeah, I don't think it's coordinated

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Speaker 1: the sense of one master plan. But I do think

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Speaker 1: that there is a great encouragement of season the day,

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Speaker 1: vot your conscience and vote your politics and try to

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Speaker 1: take a stab at creating an anti abortion law. Irrespective

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Speaker 1: of ro versus Wade and legislatures, I believe are entitled

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Speaker 1: to interpret the Constitution on their own by whether they're

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Speaker 1: doing so because of conscience or because of politics is

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Speaker 1: of the question, and as you pointed out, the politics

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Speaker 1: may backfire. Do blue states or liberal states have to

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Speaker 1: get busy passing their own laws or is that not necessary? Well,

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Speaker 1: rovers as way is the law of the land, so

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Speaker 1: blue states don't have to. Some have tried to chip away.

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Speaker 1: And one of the things that's interesting about the Virginia

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Speaker 1: trial today is that Virginia is now more comfortably of

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Speaker 1: blue state, and yet it has relatively restrictive anti abortion laws.

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Speaker 1: And so I think that in those kinds of states

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Speaker 1: you should see and I'm surprised you haven't seen more

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Speaker 1: of efforts to try to roll back those regulations. All right,

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Speaker 1: thank you so much, Harold. That's Harold Grantie is dean

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Speaker 1: of the Chicago Kent College of Law. Thanks for listening

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Speaker 1: to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen

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Speaker 1: to the show on Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and on bloomberg

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Speaker 1: dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is bloomberg

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Speaker 1: Y