CNN's Morgan Presses Scalia on Abortion and Constitution that 'Gave Women No Rights'
In a pre-recorded interview which ran on Wednesday's Piers Morgan Tonight, CNN's Piers Morgan pressed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia from the left on abortion rights and Scalia's views on Roe versus Wade.
After earlier articulating the argument that a Supreme Court should perhaps be flexible as times change, Morgan again brought up the issue of "changing times" and seemed to lump abortion in with other rights that women acquired in the 20th century, as he asserted, "Everybody believed that was the right thing to do."
(Video can be found here.)
The CNN host also went over the top in claiming that the original Constitution "gave women no rights."
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Wednesday, July 18, Piers Morgan Tonight on CNN:
PIERS MORGAN: Yeah, but in the Consitution, when they framed it, they didn't even allow women to, had the right to vote. They gave women no rights.
ANTONIN SCALIA, SUPREME COURT JUSTICE: Oh, come on. No rights?
MORGAN: Did they?
[SCALIA]
MORGAN: But, again, it comes back to changing times. The Founding Fathers were never going to have any reason at that time to consider a woman's right to keep a baby or to have an abortion. It wouldn't even have entered their minds, would it?
SCALIA: I don't know why, why wouldn't it? They didn't have wives and daughters that they cared about?
MORGAN: They did, but it was not an issue that they would ever consider framing the Constitution. Women began to take charge in the last century of their lives and their rights and so on, and began to fight for these. Everybody believed that was the right thing to do. I mean, why would you be instinctively against that?
[SCALIA]
MORGAN: How do you, as a conservative Catholic, how do you not bring your personal sense of what is right and wrong to that kind of decision? Because, clearly, as a conservative Catholic, you're going to be fundamentally against abortion.
[SCALIA]
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Comments
Why would anybody with brains
Submitted by killa37 on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 12:55am.
Why would anybody with brains and common sense - much less a Supreme Court justice like Scalia - talk to a total moron like Long Walk/Short Piers, anyway?? Ted Nugent gave Morgan the kind of treatment that he deserves - 100% of the time - by basically calling him an a**hole and refusing to cater to his stupid, lightweight, biased, loony, left-wing interrogation.
'Our' people CANNOT come out ahead when talking to these StateRun Media types.........regardless of how well they do. That audience is too shallow and too brainwashed to even understand that they have been ripped a new one.....................
Dear Piers
Submitted by Samaritan01 on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 12:58am.
If the Constitution is so flawed why is your foo-foo candy Brit ass over here and not at home??
It never occurred to "Piers and Steers"...
Submitted by bigdaddy on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 1:05am.
...to ask about a recent controversial SCOTUS ruling that came out just a few weeks back???
Of course he is from a country that at one time made it's army wear bright, red coats and march in straight lines out in the open...
That's only because they lost
Submitted by texastommy on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 7:18am.
That's only because they lost the coin toss at the beginning of the war. :-)
Captain Morgan LOL
Submitted by gkstephens on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 2:42am.
I wonder if Mr. Morgan knows his British history? The Great Reform Act of 1832 would be the beginning of the women's vote movement in Great Britain. Yet, no woman would vote in a British election until 1867, seventy-nine years after the ratification of the U.S. Constitution. The First nation to pass a referendum allowing all women to vote would be New Zealand in 1888, one hundred years after the ratification of the Constitution. The U.S. Constitution was ahead of its time in establishing rights and protecting its citizens from government tyranny. Mr. Morgan's line of argument displays an historical ignorance on the magnitude of a massive black hole, though astrophysicists will debate the use of the word massive. Pardon my hyperbole.
South Australia would be the first nation to allow women to seek seats in Parliament in 1894. Scalia would have known all of this while Morgan was still rubbing two sticks in the cave.
The Brits were also
Submitted by Tom Paine on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 6:24am.
The Brits were also responsible for the Penal Laws of 1695 that institutionalized bigotry against Catholics in Ireland. The laws made it illegal for Catholics to practice their religion, own property, receive an education or hold public office. Perhaps Morgan should learn about his own country's injustices before he attempts to lecture us about ours.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~donegal/penalcode.htm
How about interviewing Obama...
Submitted by Netstatter on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 7:31am.
Okay, Piers Morgan, how about next interviewing Obama and asking him "Why do you continue to support economic policies that don't work and that actually hurt minorities and that disproportionately negatively affect women? Didn't the people who educated you growing up do you a disservice by filling your head with these negative philosophies that now form the basis of your thought?".
Talk about bias.
Liberals lie on purpose.
Submitted by c5then on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 7:58am.
The Constitution does not grant anybody any rights. The rights that we have come from GOD. The constitution only places limits on what the government is authorized to do. It occassionally mentions some of the rights that the people have, but only in the context of specifically forbidding the government from infringing on those rights.
Morgan might be forgiven for not understanding this since he is British and the British Constitution does in fact grant their citizens some rights (and therefore an amendment can take those rights away).
Madison and Jefferson and Franklin built a Republic - Roberts killed it!
MORGAN: How do you, as a
Submitted by CO2Maker on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 9:27am.
MORGAN: How do you, as a conservative Catholic, how do you not bring your personal sense of what is right and wrong to that kind of decision? Because, clearly, as a conservative Catholic, you're going to be fundamentally against abortion.
SCALIA: [Why is there no transcription of what he said?]
Be that as it may, Scalia *should have said*: How do you, as a transplanted Brit (can I call you a tranny?) not bring your own British sense of governmental decisions. Because, clearly, as a tranny Brit, you're not going to have a fundamental understanding of the U.S. Constitution, federalism, delegated powers, and separation of powers. Right-o?
Transcript
Submitted by Brad Wilmouth on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 8:16pm.
The reason the transcripts we post at NewsBusters are more inclined to include the interviewer's words than the guest's responses is because our main purpose is to focus on the bias of the media figure, rather than the guest. I did include Scalia's responses in the video clip so it could still be viewed for those who are curious, but Scalia's responses weren't really the point of the article.
Brad Wilmouth is a news analyst for the Media Research Center.
The Founding Fathers were
Submitted by stratman on Thu, 07/19/2012 - 2:01pm.
Morgan does not know abortion history in America or even history of the world.
Abortion by a variety of methods predates written history. The Egyptions in 1550 BC document an induced abortion. Abortions were part of the American society in the 1600's by documentation. Until 1820, abortion was allowable in all or most states up until the "quickening" - the first "proof" of a pregnancy. Loss of menses, an expanding abdomen, and other signs and symptoms that may be experienced during a pregnancy could occur for other reasons. However, when the woman felt the baby move, then a pregnancy was determined and no abortive measure was allowed.
If precedent truly meant something to the Left, then there might not be abortion today, or at least not allowable .
According to American precedence, once there is proof of pregnancy then abortion is outlawed. Today, pregnancy can be detected long before the quickening. If the precedence of Roe v. Wade is sancrosanct to the Left, then it is only sensible (Jer's word from a different thread) the Left would find equally as dear the longer held precedence of abortion laws since the beginning of America: no abortion once there is proof of pregnancy.
Whether there are exceptions or not to abortion if proof of pregnancy were once again the basis of law, the actual precedence of abortion in this country is not discussed or considered, the ramifications would scare the living crap out of Leftists if they had to live by what they preach.