Jose Diaz-Balart used his Tuesday show on MSNBC to urge the Supreme Court to consider non-legal reasons in a case presents a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade. To add credence to such claims, Diaz-Balart and correspondent Jake Ward argued that "science" supports abortion, although their definition of science left much to be desired.
Ward had just presented a pre-recorded clip where he did a profile of a Chicago woman who claimed that having a third child would be harmful to her financial situation. This, not the biological question of when life begins, is what Ward meant by "science": "Jose, researchers here at UCSF say that for women across the country, if the Mississippi law is upheld, more than 20 other states may follow and at that point, we're probably looking at hundreds of women a day beginning a process of falling into more and more desperate circumstances. That is what the science, not the rhetoric, seems to say."
Diaz-Balart then welcomed former Sandra Day O'Connor clerk and MSNBC legal analyst Tali Farhadian Weinstein for further discussion. After listing more "scientific" findings from UCSF such as "women who are denied abortions are more likely to live in poverty, have a lower credit score, have evaluated stress levels and anxiety levels and less likely to have an advanced degree," he wondered: "Should the Supreme Court consider the economic and financial impact of an undue burden on a woman's right to abortion?"
Despite clerking for O'Connor, Farhadian Weinstein identifies and has run for office as a Democrat. Naturally, she urged the Court to consider these non-legal arguments because abortion is just that important: "Generally, that has not been a part of the consideration of undue burden, but it's absolutely right to think about how a decision in this case is going to impact different American women differently."
She then sounded the alarm that "if the Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade and Casey or to drain them of their meaning, we would wind up in two countries, about half the states would make abortion illegal immediately, either because they have trigger laws on their books, that say that after a decision like that, abortion would be illegal, or because they have old laws on their books that already restrict abortion. And in about half of the other states, we would live in a very different world."
In other words, federalism will work the way it was designed to work.
This segment was sponsored by AARP.
Here is a transcript of the November 30 show:
MSNBC
Jose Diaz-Balart Reports
10:32 AM ET
JAKE WARD: Jose, researchers here at UCSF say that for women across the country, if the Mississippi law is upheld, more than 20 other states may follow and at that point, we're probably looking at hundreds of women a day beginning a process of falling into more and more desperate circumstances. That is what the science, not the rhetoric, seems to say, Jose.
JOSE DIAZ-BALART: Jake Ward, thank you so much. With me now to continue the conversation is Tali Farhadian Weinstein, a former federal and state prosecutor in New York and an MSNBC legal analyst, she also clerked for former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Tali, it’s good to see you. Jake Ward just talked about the study that showed that women who are denied abortions are more likely to live in poverty, have a lower credit score, have evaluated stress levels and anxiety levels and less likely to have an advanced degree. Should the Supreme Court consider the economic and financial impact of an undue burden on a woman's right to abortion?
TALI FARHADIAN WEINSTEIN: Generally, that has not been a part of the consideration of undue burden, but it's absolutely right to think about how a decision in this case is going to impact different American women differently. You know, just from a legal perspective, Jose, if the Court were to overturn Roe v. Wade and Casey or to drain them of their meaning, we would wind up in two countries, about half the states would make abortion illegal immediately, either because they have trigger laws on their books, that say that after a decision like that, abortion would be illegal, or because they have old laws on their books that already restrict abortion. And in about half of the other states, we would live in a very different world.
