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Supreme Court Overturns Roe v. Wade. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired June 24, 2022 - 10:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:30:00]

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Beyond abortion. If you look back to all of these other cases, Loving versus Virginia, interracial marriage, Griswald, the right to obtain contraception, Lawrence versus Texas, the right to engage in private consensual sexual acts, Obergefell versus Hodges, the right to same-sex marriage. What does this decision by the court in this way that it is written despite (INAUDIBLE), despite what Alito also says, this doesn't affect anything else? Legally, it can be used to undermine those rights, correct?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN LEGAL ANALYST AND SUPREME COURT BIOGRAPHER: Of course. People are going to seize upon the basic holding here that talks about the right to abortion not being in the Constitution but you mentioned Griswald versus Connecticut from 1965. That was when the court said, you know, there's a privacy right embodied in the 14th Amendment that covers couples including married couples' ability to get contraceptives.

That is what Roe was built upon. And it's so interesting to think about how the justices talk even about Griswald. Some of you might remember that Amy Coney Barrett whose vote has made this whole thing possible today, she wouldn't even endorse Griswald and the right to contraceptives at her hearing. And I think, you know, she showed us what she was going to do even though she said she had not pre-judged Roe.

But, you know, this was coming and I think you're absolutely right, Poppy, that this opens the door to many other challenges. And one last thing I'd mentioned about this court. Amy Coney Barrett joined in October of 2020. Less than two years we have gone when this majority has seized this moment. Chief Justice John Roberts would have been ready to overturn Roe at some point but not so quickly and this was only because of the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the succession of Amy Coney Barrett.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: It's a moment for this country. Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade after 50 years, nearly 50 years.

Please stay with us, Joan, Kaitlan, Jennifer, Jeffrey and Abby. We're going to take a very quick break. Still lots of questions to answer. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:36:45]

HARLOW: We are continuing our breaking news coverage this morning. The Supreme Court has over turned Roe versus Wade. This changes abortion rights and access across the country for millions of women.

I want to read you part of the majority opinion that comes from Justice Samuel Alito, addressing the issue of precedent, stare decisis. Let me read you from the majority opinion. He writes, "The dissent argues that we have abandoned stare decisis but we have done no such thing. And it is the dissent's understanding of state decisis that breaks with tradition."

Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan wrote in the dissent, "With sorrow for this court but more for the millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection. We dissent."

SCIUTTO: Jennifer Rodgers, one question is how broadly this impacts not just the right -- not just abortion rights but potentially other rights. Now Alito writes in here specifically to that question that our decision concerns the constitutional right to abortion and no other right. Nothing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.

There are, as you know better than me, many rights like a right to privacy that are not referenced at all in the Constitution. The people have come to enjoy and believe are part of their lives today whether that's contraception or interracial marriage. When Alito says this does not affect those other things, is that true in practice when these issues are potentially, probably likely, coming to court?

JENNIFER RODGERS, FORMER FEDERAL PROSECUTOR: No. I mean, first of all, you have all of the rights that we have been discussing that are based in this right of privacy that they've now dismissed, contraception, the right to do sexual acts in your own home, with consenting adults, all of that. But then you have other things that are not enumerated in the Constitution and that the court has said enjoy constitutional protection.

Maybe the most obvious from this week being yesterday's decision in the gun case. You know, nowhere in the Constitution does it say you have a right to -- an individual has a right to carry a weapon outside of the home and yet they have found that that is a constitutional right protected, and there are other examples. So it's just, you know, they find the right when they want the right.

And never before, never before, Jeffrey can correct me if I'm wrong, but in the history of this country has the Supreme Court recognized a constitutional right and then taken that constitutional right away. The cases that they cite that have overturned prior cases are cases where they say we got it wrong before by not recognizing the constitutional right, and now we do it. This is different. This is you have this right. It's in the Constitution. Wait a minute, 50 years later, you don't have it anymore. And that has never been done before.

HARLOW: It's a very good point because there was like a page, two pages of footnotes of cases where precedent has been overturned, Plessy versus Ferguson, Brown versus Board of Education.

But, Jeffrey Toobin, there is a fundamental significant difference between those cases being overturned and Roe versus Wade being overturned in terms of right expansion.

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: The only parallel I can think of in terms of a right being taken away from Americans is not a Supreme Court opinion but a constitutional amendment. Prohibition. Prohibition took away a right that people had had for hundreds of -- for the entirety of American history. Didn't work out so well. There was a constitutional amendment taking it back.

[10:40:04]

You know, we are now in the middle of an experiment of what it is like to have a right taken away for millions of people that they expected to have and understood to have and did have for decades. How the country responds to that, I don't know. I don't know.

SCIUTTO: Well, states are responding. The Missouri attorney general has signed an opinion just in the last few minutes that he says will effectively end abortion in that state. This is something we've been discussing on this broadcast. A number of states have so-called trigger laws that will go into effect, would go in effect, are now going into effect as a result of this decision.

Abby Phillip, this has tremendous implications for perhaps two dozen states around the country.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR, INSIDE POLITICS SUNDAY: Yes, absolutely. And, you know, I was struck, Jim, by you were reading from the Alito opinion. He talks about how Roe has, in his opinion, exacerbated the political divide on the issue of abortion but the data that we have on public opinion as it relates to abortion just does not bear that out.

For decades, more than 60 percent in our latest poll, about 66 percent of Americans favor Roe v. Wade staying in place and the number of Americans who want it to be overturned has never exceeded 40 percent. So this is actually something where the public opinion on this actually has been fairly stable over decades. And so it leads to a lot of questions about what happens when the court really is so out of step with where the country is.

I think what you're going to see, you know, on the political side, is you're going to hear a lot of abortion opponents arguing that this is just going to send it out to the states. That it's not going to have as significant as an impact as it seems but the reality of what we are seeing at the state level is that there are very active, powerful activists groups who have succeeded largely in pushing abortion laws that are increasingly restrictive.

So not just abortion restricted by 15 weeks as the Mississippi law was but going all the way to fertilization and all kinds of language that bans abortion entirely in their states. Those things are also, based on what we know about public opinion, out of step with where most Americans are. And the question is, does that start to matter to more people when they go to the ballot box and make decisions about their political leaders, and that's what this decision now throws the debate into the realm of state-by-state, you know, country-by-county, city- by-city, what do American voters do about how they feel about abortion and how their political leaders feel about abortion.

HARLOW: And Kaitlan Collins, as I get to you at the White House, a little bit more from the dissent. Quote, "One result of today's decision is certain the curtailment of women's rights and of their status of free and equal citizens." That's the dissent, that is part of this result.

This was not decided on equal protection grounds. This was decided on a right to -- lac of a right to privacy. It was not decided on equal protection grounds. The White House, however, your team's reporting, has been working on a number of question marks of what power it has and doesn't have if this were to be the decision. So what can you tell us about that and what the reaction is from the president now?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the White House knew this decision was coming. They didn't know exactly what the final ruling was going to look like but obviously everyone had a pretty good idea after that leaked opinion happened several weeks ago. And so they've had time to prepare for this and they've basically been bracing for this decision.

And we are told that we will hear from President Biden today. It's not clear exactly when but the White House is making preparations for the president to address the nation on this monumental moment. And one of the things that they've been doing behind the scenes is meeting with stakeholders, meeting with abortion providers, meeting with attorneys general in several Democratic states to prepare for this moment because they know that while there's little they can do via executive action, all eyes will be turning to the White House now that this ruling has come down to see what exactly it is they are going to do in response.

And so they have been preparing several announcements. Potentially declaring a public health emergency, getting the Justice Department ready to have these legal challenges for states to try to criminalize people who go out of their state, who travel out of their state to get an abortion, eliminate some of the barriers to get access to that abortion medication.

Steps like that that you could hear in President Biden's remarks I'm told as soon as today, though it still remains to be seen of course exactly what he will say but, at the end of the day the White House knows that no executive order that they issue will restore this right that has been taken away with this ruling. That can only be done with an act of Congress. And right now obviously they know the Senate does not have the sufficient votes to get a national standard like that legalized or put into place, put into law.

[10:45:05]

And so they've been preparing these actions on their own. And so that could be something you hear from President Biden as soon as today because they know everyone is going to be seeing what the White House is saying in response to this and potentially people going to the polls in November over this issue.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: You know, Poppy, I think we should acknowledge, and you and I have been talking about in the days leading up to this decision that this is a deeply emotional philosophical moral issue for Americans.

HARLOW: That's right. That's right.

SCIUTTO: There are Americans watching this right now, upset by this decision. There are certainly some we know who are celebrating this decision, and probably many more who have complicated views and see things that they welcome and things that they're concerned about. It's kind of an issue that we pledged to you and will continue to discuss in coming days and weeks.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: As it affects and plays out across this country.

HARLOW: You're exactly right. There are many families across America who will look at this decision and say this, you know, should have come decades ago, and many who are devastated by this as they see a half century of their constitutionally protected right gone.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Right? It is divisive within families across the country and beyond.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Please stay with us. We have many more questions, including which states are most likely to act very quickly to ban abortion based on this decision. We're going to take a very short break. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:50:57]

SCIUTTO: Truly consequential day in America. Welcome back to our live special coverage of the landmark Supreme Court decision that will change abortion rights across this country. As you can see there a large crowd gathered outside the court this morning, protesting both for and against this decision.

Justices Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan wrote for the dissent about the impact of this ruling, quoting now, "Across a vast array of circumstances, a state will be able to impose its moral choice on a woman and coerce her to give birth to a child."

We want to begin here with CNN's Tom Foreman. He's going to break down the ripple effect of this ruling across dozens of states -- Tom.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is how it will actually affect you no matter how, where you are watching right now. Thirteen states have these so-called trigger laws in place for this very circumstance of Roe being overturned, meaning laws that go into effect very quickly now to ban abortion according to the abortion rights group, the Guttmacher Institute.

For example, in Kentucky, Louisiana and South Dakota, it happens immediately, meaning if you had an appointment this morning at 8:00 for this procedure, you could go through with it. From here on out, no, you cannot, according to what their law has planned there.

Then we move to a second group. The next level, abortion bans to be enforced 30 days after Roe was overturned. That includes Idaho, Texas and Tennessee. And then come a half dozen states where officials would need to certify their legislation as legally valid before their bans will kick in. That includes North Dakota, Wyoming, Utah, Missouri, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Mississippi.

Now this could be incredibly quick or it could take maybe a few days according to Guttmacher. So they could in effect be immediate or a couple of days.

And finally, we add in states that have old, unenforced abortion bans which could now be enforced and those that pass bans under Roe which were blocked by courts, all together you get a whopping 26 states certain or likely to ban abortion. And that's compared to just 16 states and D.C. with laws to protect abortion rights. States which even now are preparing for an influx of patients crossing state lines seeking care.

And you can imagine what it'll be like in Illinois where it's surrounded on all sides with states that either have already or very quickly will ban abortion. So what is the severity of these bans? What are we looking at here? Missouri has eyes on targeting even non- residents. If you were to pass through and conceive a child, they would continue on that if you got an abortion elsewhere so the laws are very severe. Big steps out here that affect every community.

HARLOW: To Tom, thank you. And to your point, about the difference in the states that is highlighted in the dissent about the disproportion impact on women without means, poor women.

Let's take you now to Washington, D.C. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Health freedom. In the Congress, be aware of this, the Republicans are plotting a nationwide abortion ban. They cannot be allowed to have a majority in the Congress to do that. That's their goal. And if you read, and again we're all studying all this but if you read what is in the very clear, one of the justices had his own statement, it's about contraception, invitro fertilization, family planning. That is all what will spring from their decision that they made today.

Such a contradiction. Yesterday to say the states cannot make laws governing the constitutional right to bear arms and today, they're saying the exact reverse that the states can overturn a constitutional right. [10:50:06]

For 50 years, a constitutional right for women having the right to choose. The hypocrisy is raging but the harm is endless. What this means to women is such an insult. It's a slap in face to women about using their own judgment to make their own decisions about their reproductive freedom, and again, it goes what I always have said determination of a pregnancy is just their opening act. It's just their front game. But behind it and for years, I have seen in this Congress, opposition to any family planning domestic or global, when we have had those discussions and those debates and those votes on floor of the House.

This is deadly serious. But we are not going to let this pass. A woman's right to choose, reproductive freedom, is on the ballot in November. We cannot allow them to take charge so that they can institute their goal which is to criminalize reproductive freedom. To criminalize it. Right now, they are saying in states that they can arrest doctors and all the rest.

What is happening here? What is happening here? A woman's fundamental health decisions are her own to make in consultation with her doctor, her faith, her family. Not some right-wing politicians that Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell packed the court with. While Republicans seek to punish and control women, Democrats will keep fighting ferociously to enshrine Roe v. Wade into law of the land.

This cruel ruling is outrageous and heart-wrenching. But make no mistake, it's all on the ballot in November. The Supreme Court has ended a constitutional right. This is 50 years proclaimed a constitutional right. What happened today was historic in many respects. Historic in that it had not granted recognize a constitutional right and then reversed it. This is a first. And again, just before it imposed a constitutional right to allow for concealed weapons.

How about those justices coming before the senators and saying they that respected state decisis, the precedent of the court? That they respected the right of privacy and the Constitution of the United States? Did you hear that? Were they not telling the truth then?

Again, just getting to the gun issue because really in preparation for this morning I was really in an exalted state about what happened in the United States Senate yesterday. Counterpoint to the dangerous decision of this Trumpian Supreme Court that they made yesterday but a way to take us to as the bill is called community safety. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. Right now and I'm going to have to leave momentarily because we just finished voting on the rule, we will be debating the bill on the floor and we expect a good bipartisan vote on it in the House.

We congratulate the Senate on the work that they have done and the timeliness of it to be passed in the Senate and the strong bipartisan way on a day when the court made such a dangerous, dangerous decision. We will, many of our House Democrats, Democrats proposal that are included in this package are that keep deadly weapons out of dangerous hands by encouraging states to establish extreme risk protection or laws, ERPO, otherwise known as red flag laws, help put end to straw purchases, close the boyfriend loophole.

So many good things are in there. And it's not everything that we wanted. We must keep moving toward background checks but universal background checks which will save most life. But this will save lives. And to listen to Lucy McGrath and other family members of those who have lost.