On abortion, you right-to-lifers might be playing checkers. But Michele Goodwin is playing four-dimensional chess!
A guest on Saturday's edition of MSNBC's The Weekend, Goodwin, a constitutional law professor at Georgetown, somehow managed to make a connection between post-Dobbs laws limiting abortions and slavery and Jim Crow laws, specifically including those restricting the ability of African-Americans to play checkers and chess.
Co-host Michael Steele—who surely professed pro-life views back when he was running for and serving as RNC Chairman—teed up Goodwin, saying that the driving force behind the new laws is a Republican desire to control women.
Goodwin took that a giant step further, claiming that "cruelty is the point behind all of this. I've been saying, this is the new Jane Crow."
Noting that it was Mississippi that brought the Dobbs case, Goodwin noted:
"This is the Mississippi that placed black women in slavery. That denied them the opportunity to vote. That restricted them and their children from walking in parks. Playing in swimming pools. Even being able to play checkers, and chess, and billiards. Actually written into law . . . This is taking playbook, pages of playbooks, from back pre-slavery. We really must understand and connect the old thread to the new. What was old is new again."
In mentioning "pre-slavery," Goodwin presumably meant, prior to the abolition of slavery. Slavery that a Republican president led a nation into war to abolish, culminating in the Emancipation Proclamation.
The segment was in service of Kamala Harris' current focus on abortion. But sure, bring slavery and Jim Crow into the mix! Make Kamala's abortion campaign a two-fer, with a targeted appeal to black voters.
Somewhere on Rehoboth Beach, Joe Biden is smiling. Shades of his "they're gonna put y'all back in chains."
Biden touts himself as a devout Catholic. Steele was raised Catholic....and spent three years preparing for the priesthood in a seminary. Georgetown is America's oldest Catholic institution of higher education. They're all miles away from their origins.
Here's the transcript.
MSNBC
The Weekend
9/21/24
9:02 am EDTMICHAEL STEELE: Michelle, let me start with you in this conversation. Help us set some context on how this debate -- we all know since the Dobbs decision how politically things have changed. But given the more recent doubling, tripling down that we see from many on the right, where it's not just about abortion.
MICHELLE GOODWIN: That's right.
STEELE: It's about how women are the root cause of the problem. So we need to control y'all. We need to make sure -- you know, Mark Robinson, you got pregnant because you didn't keep your skirt down, and now you wanna, I mean --
GOODWIN: You cannot make it up.
STEELE: You cannot make it up. These narratives that are coming from the right are so far removed from the arc of the abortion storyline from 1973. What does that tell you about this moment in the eyes of voters, especially young women who really seem to have something to say about this?
GOODWIN: Well Michael, thank you so much for having me back on the show, both you and Alicia. Look, cruelty is the point behind all of this. I've been saying this is the new Jane Crow.
Let's keep in mind it was Mississippi that brought forward the challenge before the Supreme Court. This is the Mississippi that Fannie Lou Hamer came from. The Mississippi that placed black women in slavery. That denied them the opportunity to vote. That restricted them and their children from walking in parks. Playing in swimming pools. Even being able to play checkers, and chess, and billiards. Actually written into law.
These times are quite chilling and horrific. And as the Vice President was mentioning, that is resulting from this post-Dobbs atmosphere.
But to your point, this is taking playbook, pages of playbooks, from back pre-slavery. When you look at Arizona in 1864 abortion law, that's before Arizona became a state, but importantly it's before slavery was abolished in this country.
And we really must understand and connect the old thread to the new. What was old is new again. And we fail ourselves and our democracy if we don't get that.
