[ad_1]
Abortion was a hot-button issue on Friday night’s episode of Real Time with Bill Maher, with the HBO host saying Americans are ‘living in two different countries’ after the Supreme Court voted to overturn its landmark decision granting Americans the right to an abortion.
Bill Maher began his panel discussion with Andrew Sullivan, a blogger for The Weekly Dish, and Katie Herzog, cohost of the podcast Blocked and Reported, by insisting that Republicans ‘played the long game’ to get Roe v Wade overturned.
‘They play the long game,’ he said. ‘They knew this from the beginning, they put six Catholics on the Supreme Court.’
But Sullivan disagreed, saying things could have been different in Hillary Clinton won the presidential election in 2016 or if Ruth Bader Ginsberg resigned and allowed a Democrat to appoint a judge.
‘It was luck, to some extent,’ he argued. ‘This is about Trump adding three people.’
Still, Maher said: ‘If it wasn’t this time, it would have been next time.
‘So what are we going to do now that we’re basically living in two different countries?’ Maher asked his panelists, noting that some states are now likely to overturn abortion rights, while others will keep it legal.
Late night talk show host Bill Maher declared on Friday that Americans are ‘basically living in two different countries’ following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v Wade
Maher claimed Republicans have been playing the ‘long game’ to get Roe v Wade overturned, but his panelists Andrew Sullivan, a blogger for The Weekly Dish, and Katie Herzog, cohost of the podcast Blocked and Reported, disagreed. Sullivan argued that things could have been different if Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election and Ruth Bader Ginsberg resigned, while Herzog blamed a lack of a center in American politics
‘I mean there are countries like this, Israel certainly comes to mind,’ Maher said. ‘We’re going to be living in that kind of country.’
Sullivan, though, went on to argue that the United States has always been divided, pointing out that people in Alabama and Oregon have different ideals.
‘It doesn’t have to be one consistent national opinion,’ Sullivan said, while Herzog seemed to blame the lack of a center in politics.
‘The pendulum swings further and further to the left and right,’ she said. ‘There’s no center.’
The panel discussion ultimately ended with Sullivan saying: ‘The country is not in favor of banning all abortion.’
He then implored abortion rights activists to go out and persuade others.
‘Make the argument, build the coalitions, win the elections and get prochoice back. Make sure these women will have access.
‘There are things you can do,’ he said.
In his final monologue on Real Time with Bill Maher, he said Democrats are losing the abortion debate with their woke terms like ‘birthing people’ and ‘people who menstruate’
Earlier in the episode, Maher also mentioned that in Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion, he signaled that the decision could lead the door to reversals on the right to gay marriage and birth control protections.
He joked that drug dealers will now have to start peddling the Morning After pill, and said, ‘Be careful where you get stoned and where you get boned,’ claiming that abortion will now be like marijuana where it is available in some states and not other.
And in his closing monologue, Maher blasted woke Democrats for losing the debate on abortion thank to the use of the progressive terms like ‘birthing people’ or ‘people who menstruate.’
He said that abortion is a ‘difficult issue for the Democrats to lose on, but they’re trying.
‘For decades, liberals have said, ‘If only men could get pregnant, this wouldn’t even be an issue,’ and ‘abortion rights are women’s rights.’ Well, that’s wrong now.
‘When the wokey end of the progressive spectrum talks about abortion now, they shy away from the word ‘women’ and prefer terms like ‘birthing people’ or ‘people who menstruate’ because somewhere there’s a trans man who’s pregnant and I say good for him – and I’ll be looking for his story somewhere in a future issue of Ripley’s Believe it or Not.’
A protester shouted in front of the United States Supreme Court on Saturday, after the conservative majority voted to overturn the landmark decision that guaranteed abortion rights across the country
The protests continued for a second straight day outside the Supreme Court on Saturday
Friday’s ruling struck down over 50 years of a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion – and leaves abortion rights up to the states
The episode came just hours after the seismic Supreme Court ruling tearing down over 50 years of a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.
The conservative majority voted that each individual state could now decide whether to legalize abortion.
And as a result of the ruling, abortion was automatically outlawed in 18 states, thanks to specially-devised ‘trigger laws’ and historic bans that were automatically reenacted after Friday’s ruling.
Thirteen states prepared trigger laws which would automatically outlaw terminations in the event of a ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, which was widely-anticipated.
They are: Arkansas; Idaho; Kentucky; Louisiana; Mississippi; Missouri; North Dakota; Oklahoma; South Dakota; Tennessee; Texas; Utah and Wyoming.
Abortion bans in those states will now become law within 30 days.
Five other states have also now banned terminations, after historic laws superseded by the 1973 Roe ruling automatically came back into place.
Among those five are two Democrat-governed states – Michigan and Wisconsin.
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers have both sought to overturn those bans in the court. But they remain in place for now, and Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin announced Friday afternoon that it was suspending terminations while awaiting clarification on the law.
Other states with newly-re-enacted historic bans are Alabama, Arizona and West Virginia.
Eight other states are also set to enact new anti-abortion laws. Georgia, Iowa and South Carolina all attempted to ban abortion after the six-week mark.
Those laws were branded unconstitutional, but will likely be revisited now Roe has ended. And Florida, Indiana, Montana as well as Nebraska are all working on plans to ban or restrict terminations.
There are 18 states that have near-total bans on their books, while four more have time-limit band and four others are likely to pass new bans
Still, Vice President Kamala Harris told supporters on Friday that the fight is not over, declaring that voters will have ‘the final word’.
‘This is not over,’ Harris said on Friday, speaking at a conference in Plainfield, Illinois.
‘You have the power to elect leaders who will defend and protect your rights.’
Harris continued: ‘Millions of women in America will go to bed tonight without access to the health care and reproductive care that they had this morning.
‘Without access to the same health care or reproductive health care that their mothers and grandmothers had for 50 years.’
[ad_2]
Source link