National Review editor Rich Lowry appeared on the Thursday installment on MTP Daily on MSNBC to debate former Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill on the Supreme Court's decision not to issue an emergency stay against Texas' new abortion law. An actual debate on MSNBC? Yes, but Lowry relied a combination of facts and logic while McCaskill relied on untruths and hyperbole to make her points.
Lowry tried to deny the import of this decision as not some wholesale reversal of Roe Vs. Wade, adding that even a reversal just turns the question back to each state. After Lowry argued that if Democrats truly care about abortion, they better start winning elections, host Chuck Todd asked McCaskill, "is the answer to get Roe codified in Congress?"
McCaskill's dissemination of false information began almost immediately:
I just got to tell you, my heart is beating so fast right now. It is very hard for me to stay calm, to equate the False Claims Act with sending extreme anti-abortion factions after young girls who have been raped because they didn't know they were pregnant until after six weeks, I found outrageous and this is not a work-around...
The Texas law currently allows for anyone who assists with an abortion to be sued, but nobody is going to be suing rape victims who account for only 1% of all abortions.
Clearly agitated, McCaskill also claimed, "It should be condemnation that they are trying to take 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and throw it out by creating a private police that can invade women's life at the most personal, private and difficult moment they ever face."
It's liberals who use precedent as a euphemism for abortion and then seek to overturn precedents they don't like. Additionally, despite McCaskill's angst, all the Court did was issue a procedural ruling. It has not, or at least not yet, overturned 50 years of anything.
At this point Lowry returned and correctly pointed out that the only thing that matters in the abortion debate is if you believe abortion is killing an innocent life.
He then called out McCaskill's hyperbole: "I think kind've all due respect, you're letting rhetoric get out of hand, bounty hunters, private police, that's not what this is at all and of course rape is illegal."
Lowry also rejected McCaskill's claim about precedent, "there's no right to abortion in the Constitution. There just isn't."
PS: Lowry also called out MSNBC host Chris Hayes, who implied on Twitter that he was a liar:
For @chrislhayes to call me a liar, apparently for saying the Supreme Court denial of emergency relief was a procedural decision, shows the left is so addled and hysterical on this issue it is incapable of rational thought https://t.co/N9Vzg2rWVJ
— Rich Lowry (@RichLowry) September 3, 2021
This segment was sponsored by Dove.
Here is a transcript of the September 2 show:
MSNBC
MTP Daily
1:27 PM ET
RICH LOWRY: I don’t know whether Roe’s going to go or not, I think it will certainly be eroded, but I think Democrats are going to have to get used to winning this in the small-D democratic arena rather than just running to the courts.
CHUCK TODD: Claire, is the answer to get Roe codified in Congress?
CLAIRE McCASKILL: I just got to tell you, my heart is beating so fast right now. It is very hard for me to stay calm, to equate the False Claims Act with sending extreme anti-abortion factions after young girls who have been raped because they didn't know they were pregnant until after six weeks, I found outrageous and this is not a work-around. It should be condemnation that they are trying to take 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and throw it out by creating a private police that can invade women's life at the most personal, private and difficult moment they ever face. And many of those women are very, very young. I want bounty hunters after the people that are raping their children. I want bounty hunters after them. If this is the way, the road we're going down in America, that we're going to hire private police in order to avoid constitutional precedent, I am so tired of conservatives talking about value of precedent until they don't. I mean really, I'm sorry to get so upset. Rich is my friend. But he is so flat wrong about the impact this will have on women in this country.
LOWRY: Well, I mean, the bottom, the crux of the issue is abortion a moral wrong or not? And if you believe the destruction of innocent life in any circumstance is wrong, well, then you have a different conclusion on this. I think kind've all due respect, you're letting rhetoric get out of hand, bounty hunters, private police, that's not what this is at all and of course rape is illegal. And that's enforced in Texas and enforced every state around the country. But Roe, there's no right to abortion in the Constitution. There just isn't. Roe has been used to block democratic action on abortion. Let's have the debate. We're having debate right now. Then state legislature should be able to decide. It’s going to be—abortion’s going to be illegal in some states post Roe, it’s going to be in-between in others and be fully legal in others, but if this-- Roe had never been on the books, this debate would have happened long ago and there would have been a kind of equilibrium, probably would've have been to my liking ultimately, but would’ve allowed more small-D democratic debate and a democratic voice on this which has been denied, totally denied, illegitimately by the Supreme Court.
