MSNBC has become so unhinged over state laws challenging Roe, they are actually trying to convince their audiences that the pro-life side is racist and founded on white supremacy, when it should be common knowledge that the largest abortion provider in the country was founded by a racist eugenicist white woman.
On American Voices With Alicia Menendez Sunday, the left-wing host invited her radically biased guests to stir up fear and panic over the possibility the Supreme Court would uphold Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban and that could lead to fetal “personhood” laws and the eroding of Roe v. Wade.
“Give us a sense of what shifting control of reproductive rights to states means for abortion care,” she asked her first guest, NYU Law professor and MSNBC regular Melissa Murray.
Murray was upset that Justice Clarence Thomas’s comments would lead to the protecting of the fetus as a person under the Constitution:
In that oral argument on Wednesday, Justice Clarence Thomas seemed to be signaling some concerns that we ought to be treating the fetus as a person for purposes of constitutional law, and that signals that once this is returned to the states, we might see some more agitation for creating a personhood amendment that would recognize the fetus as a person for purposes of constitutional law. And once that happens, then it doesn't matter what occurs on the state level. It doesn't matter if California permits abortion. If the fetus is considered a person like the woman is considered a person for purposes of constitutional law, you can criminalize abortion outright.
Murray later complained that “this is a court that's very much going to be out of step” with the majority of the country. But is that reality? Because it seems the majority of the country agrees with classifying the fetus as a person, considering there are 38 states that already have fetal homicide laws. There’s also the 2004 Unborn Victims of Violence Act which recognizes an unborn baby as a legal victim if hurt or killed in a violent crime against a pregnant woman.
But Menendez’s second guest, Black Lives Matter activist and MSNBC regular Brittany Packnett Cunningham really went off the deep end with her response.
After complaining that attacks on “abortion care” were attacks on “democracy,” (see transcript below,) she made the bizarre argument that the pro-life movement, the one advocating for saving black lives, was rooted in white supremacy.
Menendez teed her up to explain: "And Brittany, let's also declare about where this comes from. After Wednesday's arguments, you tweeted, ‘the roots of the pro-life movement -- and you have that in quotes -- are about preserving segregation and building a white supremacist religious right.’ Tell me more."
Her guest's strange argument came from a 2014 Politico article, that claimed “segregationists” after Roe founded the pro-life movement as another way to discriminate against black people...25 years after Brown v. Board of Education and 15 years after the Civil Rights Act:
Essentially segregationists lost, and when they got together and had to figure out how to maintain their political power, they figured that they needed to find a new issue. And six years, six years after Roe became the law of the land, they decided that abortion rights would be the thing that they would go and attack. And they were able to build a new religious coalition that is largely white and that, again, was ceded from people who were focused on keeping the country, the South in particular as segregated as possible. So there's no way to disentangle both of these priorities for a certain group of people.
If this were about pro-life principles, the GOP would be fans of robust sex education and access to contraceptives because those things actually reduce teenage pregnancy. They would be working to reduce maternal deaths and making sure that in particular, there were not a disproportionate amount of black maternal deaths and infant mortality. They would be making sure that we have paid family leave instead of being the party that continues to fight it. This has not and has never been about pro-life principles. This has always been about creating, maintaining, and coalescing power.
It's also worth noting that the alarmingly deceptive and Orwellian “abortion care” phrase was uttered five times in this segment alone. It was repeated on MSNBC’s Velshi, PoliticsNation, and The Cross Connection, Saturday and Sunday as well.
ClearChoice.com sponsored this MSNBC propaganda, you can contact them at the Conservatives Fight Back page linked.
Read the transcript below:
MSNBC
American Voices with Alicia Menendez
12/5/21
ALICIA MENENDEZ: Melissa, I want to start with you. I think we really set it up there, right? Which is like this is not--they're not going to do this and then be done. They're going to do this, and then they're going to keep going. Give us a sense of what shifting control of reproductive rights to states means for abortion care.
MELISSA MURRAY, NYU PROFESSOR, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR: Well, Brett Kavanaugh was the justice who seemed to be most enamored of this idea of returning this to the political process and specifically putting this in the hands of the state. As you say, there are about 25 states in the union that currently have trigger laws on the books that are just ready to go into effect to criminalize abortion if Roe v. Wade is overturned, and that seems imminent. Even if this is returned to the states, that means, then, that there will be broad swaths of the country where women will not be able to access reproductive care and it will basically make those individuals reproductive refugees, having to go to other states in order to seek that care. But that's not it. In that oral argument on Wednesday, Justice Clarence Thomas seemed to be signaling some concerns that we ought to be treating the fetus as a person for purposes of constitutional law, and that signals that once this is returned to the states, we might see some more agitation for creating a personhood amendment that would recognize the fetus as a person for purposes of constitutional law. And once that happens, then it doesn't matter what occurs on the state level. It doesn't matter if California permits abortion. If the fetus is considered a person like the woman is considered a person for purposes of constitutional law, you can criminalize abortion outright.
MENENDEZ: ...How would a post-roe America dispro-portly impact people of color and low-income communities?
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM, MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR:
…[T]he folk who's are already most marginalized, have much more difficulty taking the time off of work, traveling across state lines, and having the funds to access the abortion care that they need.
We also have to understand that fundamentally, and this is one of the things we talk about on this upcoming episode, that this is not just an attack on our personhood. This is an attack on our democracy because fundamental to democracy is the idea that all of us have autonomy and agency over our bodies. So here we are, people who have the ability to get pregnant, who should be able to choose when, if, and how they expand their families being spoken to as if we don't exist and as if we don't matter. We are people here right now. There's no viability argument to talk about the folks who can bear children. So let's make sure that we're having a focused conversation on how this will affect the most marginalized and frankly how it will affect all of us because it will continue to erode at the very delicate experience of democracy that we're already having right now.
MENENDEZ: And Brittany, let's also declare about where this comes from. After Wednesday's arguments, you tweeted, ‘the roots of the pro-life movement -- and you have that in quotes -- are about preserving segregation and building a white supremacist religious right.’ Tell me more.
BRITTANY PACKNETT CUNNINGHAM: So this is well documented and well researched. I included in that tweet a link to an article from 2014 that I feel like I share, frankly, every year, every couple of months as of late because I want people to understand always that in order to understand the fruits of the tree, you have to understand the roots of the tree.
Essentially segregationists lost, and when they got together and had to figure out how to maintain their political power, they figured that they needed to find a new issue. And six years, six years after Roe became the law of the land, they decided that abortion rights would be the thing that they would go and attack. And they were able to build a new religious coalition that is largely white and that, again, was ceded from the people who were focused on keeping the country, the South in particular as segregated as possible. There's no way to disentangle these priorities for a certain group of people. If this were about pro-life principles, the GOP would be fans of robust sex education and access to contraceptives because those things actually reduce teenage pregnancy. They would be working to reduce maternal deaths and making sure that in particular, there were not a disproportionate amount of black maternal deaths and infant mortality. They would be making sure that we have paid family leave instead of being the party that continues to fight it. This has not and has never been about pro-life principles. This has always been about creating, maintaining, and coalescing power.
….
MURRAY:...[W]hen they couldn't overrule the Affordable Care Act, they took it to court and tried there. So we're basically seeing the court being used to advance anti-democratic ends. Again, reproductive rights is just the tip of that iceberg. They have done it with voting rights. They've done it with the Affordable Care Act. Or at least they've tried to. Now they're doing it with Roe V. Wade. 70% of Americans favor a right to abortion even if they disagree with the scope and substance of that right. And this is a court that's very much going to be out of step with that majority, and that's the point.
